


Xenocide

by pixymisa, selecasharp



Series: Xenophobia [2]
Category: Aliens (1986), Supernatural
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Amputation, Androids, Brother Feels, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Dean in Space, Eye Trauma, Gen, Gen Work, IN SPACE!, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, Permanent Injury, SPN Cinema Genre Challenge, Space Opera, Spaceships, Team as Family, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9414617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixymisa/pseuds/pixymisa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/selecasharp/pseuds/selecasharp
Summary: This time, it’s war.





	1. Prologue / Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 Supernatural [Reverse Big Bang](http://spn-cinema.livejournal.com/) on Livejournal and crossposted to [LJ](http://teashopmuses.livejournal.com/78807.html). We collaborated with [lightthesparks](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/), who did some [amazing art](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/105573.html).
> 
> This can be read without having seen the movie or reading the first one, but check them out if you can!

**Prologue**  


The polite knock at the door was unusually early. It was about an hour past breakfast, and the staff knew better than to disturb him before lunch. Still, John wasn’t surprised by it. At 108 years old, he was long past the point of being surprised by anything. He laid the book he was reading down on the table next to his bed and answered, “Yes?”

It wasn’t the nurse; it was Zachariah. That was very unusual. Zachariah was a lot younger than John was, but he was getting to the age where travel, especially interplanetary travel, was becoming less appealing. John hadn’t seen Zachariah in person since John had first fallen ill, two years ago.

“Yes?” John repeated, a little terse. He was not fond of repeating himself, and Zachariah hadn’t made any sign of actually explaining what he was doing on SW-01. To his knowledge, Zachariah hadn’t been away from Gateway in over a year.

“Sir, we have news.”

Finally. “And you decided that the only possible way to bring me this news was in person?” John grunted.

Zachariah nodded. “Yes, sir. A salvage ship in deep space picked up the _Bellerophon_ 's escape shuttle, _Pegasus_.”

Finally. “That does explain why you came all the way here to tell me,” John responded. “Anything interesting on board?”

Zachariah was very quiet. “Your boys, sir. And they’re alive.”

 

**Part One**  


Sam was having a nightmare again.

The medical staff had placed Dean in a bed to Sam’s left, out of compassion, or because they couldn’t handle Sam’s screams when he woke up and couldn’t find Dean. Dean lay there in his own bed, his eyes hot and raw from staring. They were both in pretty rough shape, but Sammy had gotten the worst of it. Sam’s face was mostly swathed in bandages, but Dean could see the edges of the burns, twisted and red, streaking out across to his remaining eye. As Sam twitched in his sleep, the red streaks crinkled and stretched out like tongues of fire.

Dean wanted to wake his brother, to save him from the monsters haunting his dreams, but he didn’t. At least Sam was sleeping. Dean exhaled and rolled onto his back, blinked away exhaustion and stared at the sterile white ceiling.

They were at Gateway Station, the staff had said, like that made any damned sense at all. Earthshine slanted through the viewport, warm and familiar, but everything else since their cryosleep pods had been opened was a disorienting blur.

The monitor next to Dean’s bed lit up. “Still can’t sleep?” a nurse asked.

Dean shook his head. “I’ve slept enough,” he replied. She switched back off without another word, leaving Dean alone again. He looked over to Sam, watched his face screw up, like he was about to cry or scream or something. Dean reached over with his good hand, laid it on Sam’s cheek gently, and waited until the lines and creases smoothed away.

“We made it, Sammy,” he whispered.

But at what cost? Mom had died in a ship in deep space. Dean had been five years old at the time, Sam barely a toddler. They’d survived that, thanks to Mom. They’d survived the _Bellerophon_ , thanks to each other. But everyone else? They were all dead, because of Dad.

Dean closed his eyes and just concentrated on feeling the heat of his brother’s skin under his fingers. They were alive, and they were safe, and nothing else mattered.

And despite everything, Dean slept.

He didn’t know if he dreamed, or if he remembered details from the alien attack, or what. He woke up, heart racing, covered in sweat. When he looked over at Sam’s bed, Sam was sitting up, his single undamaged eye focused on Dean.

“You haven’t slept at all since they woke us up,” Sam told him. “I thought it was best to just let you get some rest.”

Dean just nodded, his throat too raw and dry to make any kind of sound he trusted. He was saved from having to make any further response by a knock at the door. Since they’d been pulled from the cryosleep chambers, there had been an endless procession of doctors and nurses, each one poking and prodding at them like they’d never seen anything like them before.

Not a single one of them had knocked.

The door swung open, and in walked a jumpsuited young woman carrying a box. Dean recognized the insignia on her chest: it was the logo for the Singer-Winchester Mining Company. But the lettering underneath the logo had changed, from the familiar entwined SW to a pair of W’s nestled side by side. What the hell had happened while they were out?

“Impala!” Sam cried. Dean blinked, and realized that a familiar furry form was climbing out of the box. He could hear her purring from across the room. The young woman tried to hold on to Imp, but she was too wily and leaped across the room, landing at the foot of Sam’s bed and making happy trilling noises as he swept her up into his arms.

“You’re with the company,” Dean said. But she wasn’t a suit. She felt like a lifer to him, born and bred out in the far reaches of space. 

She nodded. “Jo Harvelle. I work scouting and salvage with my mom. We picked up your distress beacon on our way back from deep space. You’d drifted through the core systems, and it was blind luck that we found you at all.”

“Thanks,” Dean replied. “I’m Dean, and this is my brother—”

“Sam Winchester,” she finished for him, her eyes bright with excitement. Dean looked over at Sam, and saw that his brother was mirroring the same surprise he felt. “I know who you are,” she continued. “Everyone knows who you are. The whole story of your disappearance is famous.”

“Famous,” Sam repeated. “What do you mean?”

“I believe I can explain,” said a new voice at the door. This one was definitely a suit, Dean decided. She was an older woman, smartly dressed but in casual clothes. Like she wanted to seem approachable. “Naomi Burke,” she said, and held out her hand. “I work for the Corporation, too, but other than that, I’m a pretty nice person.”

“Good,” Dean said. “That means that you can give us some answers. Why me and Sammy are famous, what the hell Gateway Station is, and when the hell the Singer-Winchester Mining Company dropped the Singer part.” Sam stiffened in the bed next to him at that last part. So he hadn’t noticed. The kid had been through a lot, though, and it was better to pull the bandage off all at once.

Naomi shrugged, like it was old news, like it had happened forever ago. “Bobby Singer left the company shortly after the two of you and the _Bellerophon_ and the rest of her crew went missing. No one’s seen or heard from him in a long time.”

And then, Dean figured out what everyone was dancing around. “And how long would that be, exactly?” he demanded. Sam reached out across the space between their beds, laid his hand on Dean’s arm, heavy and warm. “Because I’ve been back to Earth, to pick up Sam from the Academy, and there was no Gateway Station in orbit then.”

Naomi raised an eyebrow. “They haven’t discussed this with you?”

Dean shook his head, and next to him Sam said in a soft voice, “They won’t tell us anything.” 

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry about that just yet,” she returned, but she sounded like she was wavering. If Dean knew his brother, Sam was also employing the pleading puppy-eyes. Even half-blind, it seemed to work. Naomi looked as though she were debating how to put it, rather than if she should tell them at all. “All right, then. Fifty-seven years.”

The number knocked the wind out of Dean. Sam’s hand squeezed his arm, in sympathy or to comfort him, Dean wasn’t sure. The loss was greater for Sam; he had still been in school, had to interrupt his happy life for the worst fucking internship in history. All of his friends must have moved on with their lives, left the memory of Sam behind.

And as for Dean, most of his friends had been on that damned ship. 

“What about our father?” Sam asked.

“Still alive, if that’s what you’re asking,” Naomi replied. “He’s been living on SW-01.”

“And he’s not here to see us?”

At that, Naomi frowned. “Mr. Winchester doesn’t travel anymore,” she told them. “Hasn’t in years. He’s technically not even the head of the Weyland-Winchester Corporation anymore.”

“Who’s ‘Weyland’?” Dean asked, and at the same time Sam asked, “Corporation?”

Naomi held up her hands. “That’s enough, boys,” she said. “I think you’ve heard enough for the time being. There’s a lot to bring you up to speed on, and a lot of time in which to do it.” She looked over at the corner, where Jo Harvelle was still standing, and nodded to her, then turned back to Sam and Dean. “I’ll be in touch.”

And then she left.

Jo came out from the corner, reached out to pet Imp’s head. “Zachariah Weyland is the head of the Corporation,” she told them. “And it isn’t just a mining company anymore. We do search and salvage, medical and scientific research, terraforming... the Corporation does everything.”

Sam looked over at Dean, his good eye narrowed suspiciously. “This wasn’t a social call,” he said. “I don’t know why she came here, but it sure wasn’t to congratulate us on being alive.”

Dean turned to Jo again. “What do you know about this Zachariah guy?”

She shrugged. “Not much. He’s a business guy, like all of the Corporation bigwigs these days. They don’t interact with the rest of us unless they have to.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Sam mumbled. Dean didn’t disagree.

It didn’t take long before they found out what it was all about. Two weeks later, Sam and Dean were considered healthy enough for a meeting with the local suits. Naomi was there, in their corner, or so she said. Sam and Dean were still a mess, themselves. Sam’s lost eye was covered, but the acid burns were still angry and red, and would be until he had surgery to repair the damage. As for Dean, his left hand was useless. What was left of it was too damaged for any kind of repair. The doctors had already started talking about alternatives: amputation and prosthetics and other bullshit.

Dean didn’t know how the suits could look at him and Sammy and call a goddamned meeting.

“Stay cool and collected,” Naomi told them. She obviously hadn’t read Dean’s bio if that was seriously her only piece of advice. And it turned out that it wasn’t exactly a friendly meeting they were forced to attend. The entire thing was a damned investigation.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean demanded. “How many times do you want us to tell the same story?”

The ICC representative was a douchey-looking man who had obviously only ever seen a spacecraft from the view in first class. Dick Roman, a self-proclaimed “big-picture” guy, sent in to be the big gun if the bigger one wasn’t in town. “You have to take a look at it from our perspective, Mr. Winchester. You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, an M-class mining ship. A rather expensive piece of hardware, I might add.”

A weaselly crony at Dick’s elbow chirped, “Forty-two billion in adjusted dollars, minus the payload.”

“You see?” Dick continued on. “Now, the _Pegasus_ ’s flight recorder corroborates some elements of your story. That the _Bellerophon_ set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed planetoid, at that time. That repairs were made. That it resumed its course and was subsequently detonated. By you. For reasons unknown.”

“I told you—”

“It did not,” Dick continued, like Dean hadn’t said anything at all, “contain any entries concerning the hostile lifeform you allegedly picked up.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sam said. “The shuttle’s computer was linked directly with the main systems on the _Bellerophon_. It should have the entire analysis Castiel and I made of that first creature...”

“The records have been doctored, Sammy,” Dean seethed.

“Listen to yourselves,” Dick said, shaking his head. “The analysis team went over the shuttle, millimeter by millimeter. There was no physical evidence of the creature you describe!”

“Like hell there isn’t,” Dean snapped back. He slammed his bad hand onto the conference room table, peeled off the synthskin cover, and let it sit there for everyone to see. It had kind of a charred look to it, the remaining scraps of flesh blackened and dry over the white bone. “Concentrated molecular acid,” Dean told them. “Sam got splashed in the face. I got this while I was trying to neutralize the effect.”

Dick barely looked at his hand. “That could be self-inflicted,” he answered.

“Bullshit!”

Dick continued, louder, “There are no reports of any creature matching your description on any of the 300 surveyed worlds, no indigenous lifeforms on LV-426—”

“It wasn’t indigenous,” Sam tried to break in. “There was a ship, possibly crash-landed—”

“Enough!” They all fell silent. Sam from surprise, Dean due to frustration, and the rest of the table out of deference. The man sitting at the far end of the table stood up, smoothed his suit out, and then turned away from the rest of them. Zachariah, Dean guessed. He had the air of someone who was used to having people hang on his every word. “I think we’ve heard everything we need to hear,” the man said.

“Mr. Weyland—” Dick began, confirming Dean’s guess, but Dick was cut off as Zachariah shot him a look.

“You’re John’s boys,” Zachariah said, “so of course there won’t be any criminal charges. However, I do have to make an example of you. Dean, your flight license is hereby revoked. And Sam—”

Dean slammed his good fist on the table. “Sam’s an intern,” he snapped. “He’s not subject to company jurisdiction!”

“No, he’s subject to the Academy’s disciplinary committee,” Zachariah replied. “Which, considering our report on his performance during his internship, has decided to expel him.”

Dean rocked back in his seat, defeated. They’d made up their minds long before they walked into the room for this bullshit. And without his flight license, Dean wasn’t going to be able to get work, let alone be able to pay for the expensive surgeries being hawked at them. “Fuck,” he breathed. Just like that, their future was snuffed out, and the suits got up and made for the door like it was time for lunch.

“That’s it,” Sam said, his voice strangled and thick. “It’s over.”

“Not yet,” Dean replied, and followed Zachariah out the door. He grabbed the guy by the arm, yanked him to a stop. “Hey,” he said, “why don’t you send a team out to LV-426? Sam said there were hundreds of eggs on that alien ship, maybe even thousands. If you just _look_ —”

Zachariah pulled his arm from Dean’s grip. “I’ll do no such thing,” he said. “I don’t have to. The people who live there have already checked it out for us, and they haven’t seen any evidence of hostile organisms. And by the way, they call it Acheron now.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean demanded. “What people?”

“Terraformers, planet engineers. Acheron is one of what we call shake 'n' bake colonies. We set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable. It’s a big job that takes decades, and they've already been there for over twenty years.”

Dean grabbed Zachariah’s lapel in his good hand, pulled him in as tightly as he could. “How many?” he demanded.

Zachariah shrugged. “Fifty, maybe sixty families. Why?”

Dean just shook him. “You’ve killed them all.”

*****

The dreams were always worse when Dean was gone. 

Sometimes, they would seem to be getting better. Sam would get through an entire night without waking up in a cold sweat, images of what happened on the _Bellerophon_ playing like a vid in his mind. Those mornings, he would think that maybe time was doing what nothing else could, filing away the sharp edges of his memories and smoothing them into something he could handle. It had been over three months since they’d woken up on Gateway Station and found that the world had left them behind, and those mornings, Sam would think that maybe they had a chance of catching up. 

For now, though, they were still here. Sam hadn’t been able to leave Gateway’s medical facility for the foreseeable future, and so, after his new hand had been cleared for use, Dean had taken a job down at the docks, loading cargo onto the ships he used to be licensed to fly. He still spent mornings with Sam, the two of them going to the medical bay together for Sam’s extensive reconstructive care and for Dean’s physical therapy. They had afternoons together too, and some evenings as well, when Dean didn’t have to work.

But many evenings, he was gone. The evening shift was the only that worked with their schedule, all the medical appointments and surgeries and therapies, Sam got that. But whenever Dean wasn’t in the tiny quarters they shared, he got restless. Not even Impala and her purring made a difference, not on those nights. The quiet would remind him of the quiet of the ship in the moments before the xenomorph would attack. Though he would try to sleep, without the comforting presence of his brother, the nightmares came back, full-force, and he would wake up screaming. Alone. 

Lately he had taken to trying to stay up whenever Dean was down at the docks. Sometimes he could do it, stay awake until Dean came shambling back in around four am, drained from using the loaders half the night. But most of the time he was too exhausted, recovering from too many surgeries and on too many drugs, to stay awake for that long. And then he would live it all again, every blood-soaked minute. Except in his dreams, they didn’t both make it onto the escape shuttle. In his dreams, Dean died over and over again, and if he woke up and his brother wasn’t there, he couldn’t stop the waves of panic from overwhelming him.

He wouldn’t sleep again, not until Dean came back, not until Sam could touch him and make sure that he was real. They would huddle together those nights, not sleeping, just waiting for the station’s clocks to tell them it was morning and time to go.

Those mornings, Sam knew they would never fit back in.

It was one of those mornings, after a night spent crouched in the corner of their quarters hyperventilating until Dean came home, that Naomi Burke visited them again.

The knock at their door came just after the clocks clicked over to eight am, half an hour before they had to leave for their daily sojourn to the medical bay. They were up, or sort of, sitting at their tiny table with their knees knocking together and pretending to eat breakfast. At the sudden noise, Impala, who had been eating from her dish in the corner, hissed and disappeared under the bed. Dean, who had been sitting with his chin cradled in his real hand and his eyes staring glassily at the blue curve of the earth cresting the bottom edge of their tiny viewport, jerked upright. “The hell?” he grunted.

Sam shrugged. He was too tired to do more.

After a moment, Dean pushed himself to his feet and shuffled over to the door, jerking it open with a bang. “Good morning, Dean,” Sam heard Naomi’s calm voice say. Even three months later, he recognized it. “This is Lieutenant Samandriel. We’re here to—”

Dean slammed the door.

Sam watched as his brother stalked back toward him, his face drawn into a tight, angry look. “Goddamn suits,” he muttered, just as another knock sounded, louder this time.

“Dean, Sam,” Naomi called through the cheap polymer. “We have to talk. We've lost contact with the colony on LV-426.”

This time, Sam got up, carefully adjusted the patch over his still-healing socket, and went over to the door, opening it without a word. On the other side was Naomi, looking as cool and unruffled as ever, though a slight tightness around her eyes betrayed nervousness and a hint of worry. Next to her stood a young man standing as straight as a board, dressed in the uniform for the Colonial Security corps. He looked too young to be wearing that uniform, Sam thought as he stood aside and let them in. He looked too young to even be out of the Academy, let alone a lieutenant. “This is Lieutenant Alfred Samandriel of Colonial Security,” Naomi said, gesturing to him. “Alfred, this is Sam and Dean Winchester.”

“You’re a lieutenant?” Dean said, echoing Sam’s thoughts. “Did you get the badge in a cereal box?”

The lieutenant didn’t say anything, though his face twitched slightly. Naomi took over, sitting down next to Dean and gesturing for Sam to do the same. There wasn’t really room for four people at their table, but Sam sat down anyway, edging his chair over until Dean was a solid line of warmth at his side. “What do you want from us?” he asked, blunt. 

Naomi blinked, then gave them a look so sincere Sam was instantly suspicious. “As I said, we’ve lost contact with Acheron, the colony on LV-426. Lieutenant Samandriel is in charge of a security team that is going to go in and evaluate the situation. We’d like to bring you both in on the mission, on a consultant basis. Other than the colonists and technicians assigned there, you two are the only people with experience on that planet.”

Dean let out a derisive laugh. “Seriously? You seriously came here to ask us that? After you and your company fucked us over, you want us to go _back_?”

Go back. 

The room seemed to close around Sam, the already small space growing smaller. Suddenly it was hard to breathe, and images of last night’s dream, of Dean melting in puddle of acid at his feet, flashed through his mind. Struggling for breath, he groped frantically for his brother’s hand. The real one, not the cold mechanical one that had replaced the one the xenomorph had destroyed. A moment later, Dean’s fingers were lacing through his, rough and sure, and Sam managed to drag in one breath, then another. Dean was here. Dean was here, and they were never going back.

Dean squeezed his hand. “Forget it,” he growled at Naomi. “It’s not our fucking problem. You’re the idiots who built a colony there in the first place, you and Lieutenant Alfie here can go figure it out.”

“Can I finish?” Naomi asked softly.

“No. We’re done.” Dean stood up then, pulling his hand from Sam’s. His mechanical hand flexed, the fingers making tiny whirring noises as they moved. Dean glared down at it until it stilled. It was only temporary, the doctors said, until he was eligible for a bionic synth replacement. If he ever was.

“We don't know what's going on out there,” Naomi said quickly, standing too, her eyes fixed on Dean. “It may be a downed transmitter, and that’s all. But, if it's not...” She paused, letting her words sink in. “If it’s not, then I would like you both there. As advisors.”

“You won’t be going in with the security team,” the lieutenant said, speaking for the first time. He sounded just as young as he looked, but his tone was even, measured. The tone of someone who had been trained for command. “I can guarantee your safety.”

Dean laughed again. “No, you can’t.”

He edged around Sam and strode to the door, flinging it open. “Thanks for the visit, but we’ve got to get going. So get the hell out.”

Naomi nodded slowly. “To the medical bay, right? You still can’t afford that fully bionic hand, I hear.” She glanced at Sam, and there was something in her eyes now that he didn’t like, a mixture of regret and cold determination. “And Sam. You’re still on the list for the ocular implant, aren’t you?” She gestured to his face, and Sam unconsciously lifted his hand and touched his cheek. The scars were still there, but most of the reconstructive work was done. Now it was just a waiting game to see if he healed enough to accept one of the new bionic ocular implants. “I hear the list is very long, and you’re very low on it. There’s no guarantee you’ll ever get it, is there? Not,” her eyes moved to Dean, “on one dock worker’s salary.”

Dean went absolutely still. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Naomi replied, “that I could get you reinstated as a flight officer. The Corporation’s already agreed to pick up your contract, and the Academy has agreed to graduate Sam with full honors. We can also help defray your medical costs. You’ll get a bionic hand, Dean, not that cheap stand-in, and Sam will be at the top of the list for the implant. He’ll see properly again.” She stepped forward, both palms out. “Help us, and the Corporation will help you.”

“ _If_ we go.” Sam didn’t even realize he’d spoken until he did.

Naomi turned to him, blinking, and nodded. “Yes. If you go.” Her hand dipped in the pocket of her sleek jacket, and then she was holding a translucent phone card out to Sam. “Think about it, Sam. It might just help with the nightmares, if you face it. A second chance.”

She nodded to the lieutenant, who stood. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Winchester,” he said, with a nod that felt like a salute, and Sam remembered that Dad had helped develop the Colonial Security training program, all those years ago. The same program that he had personally put his own sons through, when they were younger than any trainee.

They both left then, neither of them looking back, and Dean slammed the door behind them with such force that it bounced open again. Swearing, Dean shut it again, then turned to Sam. “Dad,” he growled. It was all he needed to say.

Sam looked down at the card Naomi had given him. “You think she’s working for him?”

“Of course she fucking is. He wants us to go back,” Dean raged, pacing back and forth, the fingers on his mechanical hand whirring faster and faster. “The old bastard sent us there in the first place, and now that we aren’t playing his stupid fucking game anymore, he’s using you as leverage to get us to go!”

“But why?” Sam asked, setting the card down on the table. “Why us? He hasn’t even tried to contact us since we got here. We failed to bring it back, remember? Special Order whatever it was that Castiel had. We ruined that. And he would know it, after that hearing.”

“Well, it sure as hell isn’t Zachariah Weyland or Dick fucking Roman who’s so gung-ho to send us there,” Dean pointed out. “It’s got to be Dad. When it comes to this shit, aliens, he’s still making the calls.”

Dean’s hand was starting to make grinding noises. Sam reached out for him, caught him around the shoulders and pulled him into a brief hug. “He can’t make us go, Dean,” he said quietly. “Come on, man, calm down. We’ve got to get to the medical bay, remember?”

Dean took a deep breath, shoulders heaving. Slowly, the mechanics in his hand came to a stop. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

That night, Sam sat cross-legged on the bed with Impala in his lap, waiting for Dean to come back. The vidscreen was on, some stupid Corporation commercial about Building Better Worlds through terraforming, but Sam wasn’t listening. He just wanted the noise, to break up the silence of the quarters without Dean.

_Go back._

Sam lifted Impala and hugged her, ignoring her protesting mewl. He didn’t want to go back there, ever. It was madness, what Naomi had said. She couldn’t comprehend it. This wasn’t about getting back on a horse after a fall. There was no ‘facing’ a xenomorph. And, if all of those eggs Gordon had seen had hatched… There could be hundreds of them. Thousands. 

A sudden hiss, and a sharp pain slashed across his abdomen. Sam looked down to see Impala bolting away from him, her tail bottlebrush thick, her ears back. Had she clawed him? She must have; there was blood on his shirt, a small red patch that was widening as he watched. A wave of pain tore through him, and he doubled over, gasping. 

_What was happening?_

There was a tearing noise, and Sam fell off the bed, his body contorting. Agony flashed through him, twisting his limbs, closing his throat. 

Inside him, something _moved_.

“No,” he moaned, as his shirt billowed out, as blood sprayed across the dangling bed sheets. “No, no, no…”

The door banged open, and Dean rushed in, eyes wild. “Sam!” he cried, and Sam tried to reach for him, his fingers dripping with blood. 

“Dean,” he wheezed, as the xenomorph burst out of him, ripping him apart. His head fell back on the floor, his one eye tearing up. His vision went blurry, and he could barely make Dean out, his face a mixture of horror and concern. 

But he could still see it when the xenomorph went for Dean’s throat.

“Sam!” he heard Dean say, and he wrenched his eye open, choking on the sobs rising in his throat. The room was dark, the only light a slash coming from under the door, and Dean was bending over him, his eyes wide and frightened. Sam fought for breath, felt at his own chest. Nothing. 

Another dream.

He threw his arms around Dean, burying his face in his shoulder. “Hey,” Dean whispered, sitting down on the bed next to him and holding him close. “Hey, Sammy, I’m here.”

“I can’t,” Sam gasped back, twisting his fingers in the jumpsuit Dean wore for the docks. “Dean, I can’t keep this up. We both can’t.”

Dean sighed, and Sam could hear the weariness in it. Dean wasn’t doing much better than he was. He didn’t seem to have nightmares, but Sam knew that it was because he never slept, except for a couple hours after his shifts, when he was too tired not to. “I know, Sammy.”

Sam pulled back, enough to look Dean in the eye. “What if,” he said, tentative. “What if we go? What if we go and make damn sure that they’re all dead?”

Dean was already shaking his head. “You’re in no shape—”

“I’m almost healed,” Sam cut him off. “I won’t need another surgery unless the optic nerve doesn’t regenerate, and I’m not getting that bionic eye unless we do this, you know that. We’ll be with a trained team, and we’re both certified in security protocols anyway. And—” He broke off, breathing hard, and then tightened his grip on Dean’s arms. “And I need to know that they’re dead.”

Dean didn’t answer for a long time. Then he let out his breath, all at once. “Dad won’t want them destroyed.”

“Who cares what Dad wants? This is a Colonial Security mission, not a company one. Dad may have helped with the training manual there, but he was never in charge. They make their own calls.”

“They _did_ ,” Dean pointed out. “Who knows how it works now?”

“Why else would Naomi have brought Lieutenant Babyface with her?” Sam demanded. Dean barked out a short laugh at that. “Look, we’ll call Naomi in the morning, make sure. But if they are—” He let go of Dean, pushed his hair out of his face with both hands. “If they are, then we should go. Both of us.” He looked up at his brother’s shadowy face. “Please, Dean.”

Dean shook his head again. “Screw waiting. We call her right now.”

The card was still on the table. Sam picked it up, slid it home, and a few moments later, Naomi’s image flickered onto the vidscreen. She looked less than perfect for once, her usually precise hair mussed, her eyes sleepy. “Hello, Dean,” she yawned. “Sam. Are you two all right?”

“Just tell me one thing, Naomi,” Dean demanded. “You and Colonial Security, you’re going out there to destroy them, right? Not to study. Not to bring back. Just to wipe them out.”

“That's the plan,” Naomi said, her voice solemn. “You have my word on it.”

“And Impala?” Sam asked. “Can someone take care of her while we’re gone?”

“We can contact Jo Harvelle again, if you like,” Naomi answered. “Her ship’s in dock right now, actually.”

At their feet, Impala mewed, pawing at Sam’s leg. He reached down, picked her up and hugged her. He’d miss her, but at least he would know she was safe. And he knew she’d be happy with the run of an entire ship and not stuck in these cramped quarters. He stroked her head, kissed her between the ears, and whispered, “You’re staying here, you little shit.” She meowed and put a paw on his cheek.

“Well, boys?” Naomi asked.

Dean touched Sam on the shoulder, and Sam nodded.

“All right,” Dean said, turning back to the vidscreen. “We’re in.”

*****

Waking up from cryosleep was always a pain in the ass. On the _Bellerophon_ , the crew had been able to rouse slowly, letting the grogginess and disorientation fade on its own. Naomi’s security team obviously had a different routine — it was only moments after the cryosleep pods opened, and the leader of the team, Elkins, was up on his feet and yelling at the others. Daniel Elkins had the look of a space marine gone private with his rugged features, scars, and clean uniform, and he had the familiar attitude of a man used to running a crew without a lot of corporate oversight.

“All right, ladies,” he hollered. “I can tell the beauty sleep didn’t do you ugly sons of bitches any good, so let’s get moving. C’mon, people, we’re on the clock and we ain’t getting paid hourly. Move it!”

The security team was divided into two parts, the grunts and the techs. Only the grunts had been put into cryosleep, the two techs left awake for the three-week voyage to run simulations and try to regain contact with Acheron. The grunts got moving fast, beating off the sleep with quick bursts of activity. Two of them started doing pull-ups at an exercise bar, bantering back and forth as they did. One was a woman with short-cropped dark hair and a mean glint in her eyes.

“Hey, Meg,” one of the grunts, a short and pasty blond guy, yelled at her. “Anyone ever mistake you for a man before?”

“Nope,” she grunted between pull-ups. “Anyone ever mistake you for one?”

Raucous laughter echoed all around them. Dean glanced over at Sam’s pod, watched his brother wipe the sleep from his eye. Despite everything, the cryosleep seemed to have had a positive effect. Sammy’d been having more nightmares, and from the dark circles he’d developed in the last few months, Dean could only guess that they were getting worse. And as for Dean himself, well. Cryosleep always felt a bit like a too-long nap to him, but this time he felt good and sharp.

“Hungry?” Dean asked.

Sam reached up to smooth his hair and eyepatch into place. “I could eat,” he said.

The baby-faced lieutenant came up beside them, his mouth halfway open, like he was about to start a conversation. Dean jerked away, scowling, and shot at him, “Get it moving, Alfie.”

It wasn’t like the _Bellerophon_ , stupid jokes around a small table, familiar faces and good food. The breakfast they were served came out of a cafeteria, and was only a little bit better than the food at the medical wing on Gateway. Sam only picked at the food set out for them, putting mostly fruit and a small bowl of cereal on his tray. He took a spot over at the tables, next to Naomi. Alfie followed him with his own tray, causing some of the grunts to call after him, “Too good to sit with the rest of us?”

The dark-haired woman, Meg, sidled up next to Dean as he tried to determine if the bacon was real or not, and said to him, “What’s the story with Pretty-boy? I like my boys young and fresh, but the eye patch makes him look like a pirate.”

“That’s my brother,” Dean gritted out.

She laughed. “Sure, if that’s what floats your boat.”

Dean ditched the bacon and followed Sam over to the table, settled down on the seat next to him. The food was terrible, eggs lukewarm and rubbery, and the coffee tasted like it had been sitting on the burner for the entire trip. He ate it anyway. Sam played with his food more than anything else, but Dean didn’t say anything. He knew how Sam felt, being back in space, heading back to the place that had ruined their lives, all for the same company — sorry, _Corporation_ — that had thrown them aside. Dean didn’t have an appetite either, but making landfall was always harder on him on an empty stomach.

Another member of the crew, the executive officer of the _Janus_ , took a seat on the other side of Sam. He wasn’t in cryosleep with them, but Dean had seen him around a few other times, a tall black man with a smooth head and a neatly trimmed beard. The name ‘Henriksen’ was emblazoned on the front of his uniform.

“Did I hear right? You were rough-housing with the crew?” Alfie asked.

“I don’t ‘rough-house’,” Henriksen replied with a smile. “They were just testing out my speed and reflexes, and thought that knife-juggling was the best way. I indulge them, I freely admit that.”

Alfie frowned. “No damage done, I assume?”

Henriksen held out his hand, where a small bandage was taped across his palm. “Annie patched me up afterwards, though she did make a comment about pigheaded synthetics. I told her—”

Dean was on his feet before he even finished processing the words. Sam too, and Dean moved to quickly put himself between Sam and Henriksen. “You’re an android?” Dean demanded.

Henriksen frowned at him. “I prefer the term ‘artificial person’—”

Dean whirled on Naomi. “You never said anything about having an android on board.”

“It didn’t occur to me,” she replied, infuriatingly calm. “It’s standard procedure to fly out with a synth—” She shot a look at Henriksen and amended herself, “—with an artificial person on board.” To Henriksen, she added, “Forgive them. A synthetic was on their last trip out, and severely malfunctioned. There were quite a few deaths.”

“ _Malfunctioned_?” Sam repeated, incredulous.

“I’m shocked,” Henriksen replied. Now that he was looking for it, Dean could kind of see the similarity between him and Castiel, the understated emotion, the way he held himself, and the cadence of his speech. The smiling was new, though. “Was it an older model?”

“Cyberdyne Systems 120-A/2,” Naomi supplied.

Henriksen turned to face Dean. Behind him, Dean could hear Sammy’s breathing, rough and ragged. “That explains it,” Henriksen said. “I’ve known a few A/2s, every last one of them is a twitchy motherfucker. With my behavioral inhibitors, it’s impossible for me to harm, or by inaction allow harm to come to a human.”

“Stay away from us,” Dean growled. He threw an arm across Sam’s shoulder, not caring if it caused the grunts to speculate, and lead him away.

“I wasn’t really hungry anyway,” Sam told him.

“Yeah, me either,” Dean replied.

Naomi caught up with them in the hallway, several minutes later. “There’s a briefing now,” she told them, tucking a stray strand of her hair behind one ear. “Concerning the information you both provided to the Corporation about your experiences. I’d like you to be there.”

Dean snorted. “You mean we have to be there.” Suits always did that, pretended you had a choice about what they wanted you do.

Naomi didn’t bother denying it, just said, “It won’t take long, I promise.”

They followed her into a room off the mess, set up with benches facing a large screen on one wall. The others were all there already, and Dean caught the short pale man from earlier sneering at him again. He ignored it; he was used to looks like that, even from before. They’d always been the boss’s kids, after all. 

He steered Sam over to the side of the group, where the two techs were sitting, as far from the android as he could get. Henriksen didn’t even look at them, which was good. Sam was all stiff, so tense Dean half expected him to start vibrating. 

“Hi, I’m Charlie,” one of the techs, a pretty redhead, said, scooting over to make room on the bench for them. “This is Martin. Nice to meet you guys.”

She didn’t seem like as big a douche as all the grunts they’d met so far, so Dean smiled back. Good call, sitting with the techs, he decided, as Sam relaxed a bit. “Dean,” he said, shaking her hand, “and this is my brother, Sam.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sam said, and he shook her hand too.

“Don’t bother, boys,” a voice drawled, and Dean turned to see Meg smirking at them. She jerked her chin at Charlie. “Charlie here doesn’t play for your team.”

“Piss off, Meg,” Charlie replied, and Meg laughed and sat down. Next to Dean, to his irritation.

“Who is that?” Sam murmured to Charlie.

“Meg Masters,” Charlie whispered to them both. “Private first class. She’s a crack shot, but she’s kind of, uh... difficult.”

“I’m never going to remember everyone,” Dean muttered.

Charlie smiled at them. She had a nice smile, Dean decided. “Don’t worry, I already know all these idiots. I can help.” 

Lieutenant Alfie called for attention then, and the room quieted. Alfie stood in front of them, with Naomi to the side. Behind the two of them was the screen, which flashed up a sketch of the alien some corporate rep had done off of their descriptions. Everything was there, the clawed hands, the whipping tentacles, the elongated head, but it didn’t convey even a fraction of what it was like to actually see one. 

Next to him, Sam went rigid.

“You’ve already been given the mission parameters,” Alfie said, holding up a tablet that showed the same damn sketch. The others all had them too, Dean noticed. “Make sure you study the information on it before we get to Acheron. The info is thanks to our advisors, Dean and Sam Winchester.”

A murmur went through the group at that. 

“Advisors?” the short pale guy cracked. “Captain Hook and his one-eyed boy toy?”

Charlie whispered, “Private First Class Gabriel Hudson. He’s an ass.”

“Got that part already,” Sam murmured back. Dean snorted. A-fucking-men, he thought.

Alfie ignored him. “Any questions?” 

“I got one for them,” Gabriel called out. He turned to look at them, and Dean instinctively moved in front of Sam. “You’re telling me you think it’s _aliens_ that got the colony? Like, seriously?” 

“No, idiot,” Meg laughed. “They’re saying it’s _xenomorphs_.” She raised an eyebrow at Dean. “They do say the pretty ones are the craziest.”

Gabriel turned on Alfie. “So this whole mission isn’t a fight, it’s another damn bug hunt?” 

“For bugs we don’t even know are there?” another grunt — “Private Tracy Bell,” according to Charlie — added.

These idiots didn’t get it. “Whatever you’ve heard about them so far,” Dean said loudly, standing up, “it’s wrong. They’re over two meters at full growth, have an armored exoskeleton, and are fast as hell. Just one of these fuckers took out my entire ship’s crew in just a few hours, and did this to me because it bleeds goddamn acid.” He held up the mechanical hand. “You can’t shoot them without risking melting everything around you, and you can’t stop them without a weapon. Flamethrowers are the best bet, but they won’t kill it. Not much can.”

“Fatalistic much?” the other tech, some balding older dude, said.

“Realistic,” Dean snapped. “Look, this isn’t a fight or a bug hunt. This is a get in, save anyone left, get the hell out, and blow up the planet mission.”

Naomi held up a hand. “Don’t be so hasty. We don’t know for sure that it’s the same creature you described.”

“You believe this guy?” Gabriel said to her. “You believe there are fuckin’ _aliens_ out there?”

“I know there are,” Dean shot back. “And you all will too, soon.”

“We can’t ignore the possibility,” Lieutenant Alfie said quickly. “Prepared for anything, that’s our motto, right?” When no one responded to that other than to give each other sidelong looks, he gestured at Dean again. “Go on, Mr. Winchester.”

Dean shook his head. “I said my piece.”

“And a nice piece it is,” Meg purred, with a pointed look at his ass. Normally Dean would have been flattered, strong hot woman like that checking him out, but not this time, not when he knew she was just fucking with him. She did just call him a piece of ass, more or less. Sam must have agreed, as he shot her an irritated look. Or as irritated as Sam’s looks got, now.

Naomi looked over at Sam. “Sam? Anything to add from a science officer’s perspective?”

Sam cleared his throat and stood up. “It’s important to understand the xenomorph’s life cycle,” he ventured. “It actually has two forms.”

“Like butterflies?” Gabriel snickered.

“Shut up, ass,” snapped Meg. Her annoyance with Gabriel must be stronger than her desire to mess with them, Dean figured. Small favor, at least. 

“The first form hatches from a sort of large egg, and attaches itself to its victim’s face. It’s not much bigger than a human head, at that point. Once it’s attached, it injects an embryo into the victim’s abdomen through the throat, detaches, and dies.” Sam faltered. “Its, uh, its whole purpose is to reproduce.”

“It's basically a walking sex organ,” Dean interjected, to several guffaws.

“Sounds like you, Hudson,” Charlie yelled out. Gabriel gave her the finger, which she cheerfully flashed back with both hands.

“The embryo, the second form, hosts in the victim's body for several hours. Gestating. Then it… then it…” Sam broke off, his face going tight, and Dean recognized the signs. Sam was having trouble breathing, and he had that look on his face, the one Dean knew meant he was living it again.

“Then it bursts out,” Dean took over. He reached over with his good hand and laid it on Sam’s. His brother clutched at it, and slowly, slowly, his breathing went normal again. Dean kept talking while his fingers stroked Sam’s, reassuring. “It’s about the size of a cat at first, but then it grows rapidly—”

“I just need to know one thing, boys,” Meg interrupted. She raised her finger in an imaginary gun and sighted down it. “Where they are.” With a wicked grin, she mimed shooting right at Gabriel.

“You’ve got all the information,” Lieutenant Alfie asked quickly. “Any other questions before we break?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel mocked. “Can we see the psych profiles for those two?”

This time it was Dean who flashed him the finger.

He got Sam out of there before anyone else could say a damn word to them. They made their way down from the briefing room, through the long corridors to the belly of the ship. The medical bay was down there, and the cryosleep pods, but more importantly, so was the command center for the more science-oriented part of the mission. Charlie and the other tech had beaten them there and were working on something that Dean couldn’t parse. He could feel Sam stiffen next to him, not in the rigid, terror-struck way following one of his nightmares. No, this was more like when Sammy was younger, before he joined the Academy, when he was faced with a problem that intrigued him.

Dean reached out, squeezed his shoulder, and nodded to Charlie, who glanced up and waved. “Go on,” he told Sam quietly. “Get your geek on. I know you want to.”

Sam turned to face him, the lights catching the dark circles under his eyes. “You’ll be okay?” he asked. Dean just nodded and nudged him again, and this time Sammy went, came up behind Charlie and started talking about something that went completely over Dean’s head.

It would be okay, Dean told himself. Sam was fine, and talking to people who weren’t dicks would be good for him. He had to stand there, though, and watch Sam for a long time. Just to be sure.

Then he wandered the ship, running his hands over her unfamiliar surfaces, trying to figure out her design. The _Janus_ seemed to be a repurposed military ship, which made sense, considering. Everything on her was built for maximum efficiency, from the barracks to the mess hall, from the shower room to the cryosleep chamber.

By the time he made his way down to the cargo hold, the security team was already starting to prep their shuttles for launch. Dean came up beside Sergeant Elkins and said, “Your crew gets everything done in a hurry.”

“That’s because they’re the best,” Elkins replied. He turned to face Dean, a peculiar look in his eye. “You know, I’ve been around a long time,” he started. “I’ve seen a lot of action, in every sense of the word, but I never in my life thought I’d see you again.”

Dean stared at the old man for a minute. “We’ve met,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Sorry, but I can’t place you. A lot has happened in the last fifty years.”

“I was a kid,” Elkins replied. “Little brat, too. You piloted a transport ship, before you got your industrial rating. I bolted from my parents, wound up in the cockpit with you.” He shook his head. “Dunno why you didn’t toss me out an airlock.” 

Dean exhaled. He remembered that job and that obnoxious little kid who’d reminded him too much of Sammy when he was that age. “If I had, I probably wouldn’t have kept the job.”

“It’s a shame they clipped your wings.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean said, shrugging, “I got ‘em back, conditionally. If we live through this, I’ll get my own ship, maybe start over with Sammy.”

“And for now?”

Dean shrugged again. “I’m a fucking consultant. Sam knows the science better than I do. I’m rated in security protocol — we both are — but you’re a full team. I’m a fifth wheel, with nothing to do.”

“And what can you do?”

Elkins’s tone had changed, and to Dean it felt like a challenge. So he pointed to the biggest loader in the cargo hold, and said, “I can drive that.”

“Even with that lump of metal on your arm?”

Dean looked down at the mechanical hand. While he wasn’t looking, it had started to twitch again, but he concentrated and the twitching stopped. He held the hand up, slowly and deliberately folded all of his fingers down except the middle one. “I can make it do this,” Dean told him, and Elkins burst out laughing.

“Okay, then. Strap into that loader and get a move on it,” Elkins said. “Landfall is coming soon, and having an extra set of hands to do the job would be a big asset. Do a really good job, and I’ll take you down to that rock with us, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean replied with a smile.


	2. Part Two

**Part Two**   


The _Janus_ wasn’t nearly as big as the _Bellerophon_ had been, but it was swarming with people, most of whom looked at Sam with a mixture of contempt and awe. Despite his own decades-old security rating, he knew they all thought he was useless, Academy-educated and injured as he was. Trying to deal with it all was making an already hard trip even harder, and he hadn’t even been out of cryosleep a full day yet.

So when Dean had told him to go to the techs, Sam had gone. Charlie was friendly, the first friendly person other than Dean he’d seen on the ship, and what’s more, she and Martin must have graduated the Academy as well. If anyone could answer his questions, they could.

Martin just grunted when he asked them about the terraforming process, but Charlie smiled up at him and gestured to the empty chair next to her. “I can show you the readings we’ve been getting over the last twenty years, since the atmospheric generators were put in. It’s old tech, really, but I guess it’s still after your time, huh?” She made a face. “Oops, sorry, wasn’t supposed to bring that up.”

Sam, to his surprise, found himself laughing. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s weirder when people pretend we aren’t, you know.” 

“Out of place,” Charlie nodded. “I get it. Well, not really, of course I can’t get _that_ , but—” She waved a hand at the monitors surrounding them. “I’m rated for security, you know. I mean, I love tech, I do, and I’m great with it, but I worked my ass off at those security protocols, and I never do any actual missions. They always keep me back to run the tech.”

“They don’t trust me to do it right without her,” Martin put in then, swiveling in his chair to face them. He didn't look directly at Sam though, Sam noticed. “I’m just a private, but Charlie here’s a corporal, and they still make her stay back with me.”

“A corporal?” Sam repeated, surprised.

She nodded. “Corporal Charlotte Middleton, officially.”

“But don’t call her Charlotte,” Martin said, straight-faced. “I got the scars to show you why not.”

Charlie laughed and punched him in the arm. “Just bring up LV-426’s specs, you old bastard.”

“See what I mean?” Martin muttered to Sam, but his fingers flew across the keyboards, and a moment later he and Charlie both were explaining how terraforming worked, showing him atmospheric data from the generator and simulations of how it worked. Sam listened and watched, taking it in in silence. He remembered some talk from the professors at the Academy about how terraforming would be a reality soon, but it was still overwhelming to see that it wasn’t even considered a new process anymore. 

They’d missed so much.

“I’ll show you the atmospheric generator on the way down,” Charlie said, her face glowing. “It runs about thirty processors all over the planet, all completely automated.”

A beep sounded, and Naomi’s face appeared on one of the screens. “Still nothing from the colony?”

Charlie shook her head. “Dead on all channels.”

Naomi smoothed back her already smooth hair. “We’re coming into orbit now. It’s about time to head for the shuttle bay.” Her image winked out. 

Sam stared at the blank screen. “Shuttle bay?” 

A loud bell clanged throughout the ship. Martin got up. “We’re all going down in a shuttle and taking ground transport over to the station, but Charlie and I and the lieutenant—”

“And you and Dean. And Ms. Burke,” Charlie interrupted.

“—will stay in the transport and monitor the security team,” Martin finished. “We’re taking an APC down though, at least.”

Dean. Sam glanced over at the door, stomach tightening. He wasn’t expecting to see his brother there, waiting, not after this long, but his breath still caught in his throat at the sight of the empty doorway. 

He shoved his chair back. “I need to find my brother first,” he said. He knew his voice was shaking, but he didn’t care. He’d be fine as soon as he found Dean. 

Charlie got to her feet too. “He’ll be heading for the shuttle bay too,” she said, putting her hand on Sam’s arm. She didn’t seem fazed at all, but he could tell by the gentleness in her voice that she knew, and understood. He wondered if something had happened to her, once. “Let’s go.”

Even though he wasn’t entirely sure where the shuttle bay was, Sam still beat both Charlie and Martin there. The bay was nearly half the entire size of the _Janus_ , big enough to house two shuttles, one of them a full-sized interplanetary model capable of carrying heavy equipment. His heart pounded in his ears as he scanned the vast area for any trace of Dean. A moment later, he spotted him over by the larger of the shuttles, standing next to the sergeant — Elkins, Sam thought his name was. Relief washed over him, and he nearly ran over, pushing his way past Gabriel Hudson, who sneered at him as he went by.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said, reaching out and grasping his shoulder in greeting. Sam let out a breath and smiled at him. Dean smiled back, but briefly, and something flickered in his expression. Something was up, Sam knew immediately.

“Dean?” he asked cautiously. 

Dean glanced at Elkins, then took Sam’s shoulder and pulled him away a few steps. “Sergeant Elkins invited me to go in with the team,” he said, voice low.

The rest of the room faded away as Sam stared at his brother, ice curling around his heart. “Go in?” he repeated faintly.

“They don’t get it, Sammy,” Dean said urgently, reaching out and grasping Sam’s shoulders with both hands. The mechanical one felt stiff against his flesh, all hard edges and cold surfaces, and all the air in the room seemed to be rushing away. “It doesn’t matter what we tell them, how many fucking sketches we show them — they don’t get it, not really. Someone’s got to go in with them.”

“No,” Sam said, barely aware of his lips moving. “No, Dean, I’ll go, don’t—”

“ _No_ ,” Dean said, so firmly Sam stopped in surprise. “I’m better at security protocols, and you know more about the science-y shit than I ever did. I need you on the tech end to monitor us. And—” He broke off, sucked in a deep breath, and pulled Sam into a rough hug. “And I need you safe, Sammy. Please.”

“I need _you_ safe,” Sam whispered to Dean’s shoulder.

“Then keep me safe, Sammy,” Dean said back, voice ragged. “Keep us all safe.”

Sam didn’t want to agree. He didn’t want to let Dean out of his sight, not on that planet, not again. But he knew Dean was right. He hated it, but he knew it. Throat tight, he made himself pull in a breath and nodded. “But you’re taking a flamethrower in,” he rasped when he could speak, and Dean laughed and hugged him tight, then released him.

“Damn straight I am,” he grinned. “Already talked to Elkins about it.”

Another bell clanged throughout the room then, and the lieutenant clapped his hands and nodded to Elkins. 

“Move it, ladies! Fall in!” Elkins bellowed above the chatter. The room fell silent, except for the shuffling of the team as they efficiently lined up. Besides him and Dean and Naomi, who wasn’t part of the security team either, Sam counted fourteen of them. Nearly twice the number of the crew of the _Bellerophon_. More, with them included.

It wouldn't be enough.

“That’s the _Portunus_ ,” Charlie told Sam, falling back to walk beside him and Dean as they filed toward the larger of the shuttles. “Annie — Corporal Hawkins — is going to fly us down.” She nodded at the front of the line, to a wiry woman with ash blond hair twisted up on the back of her head. “The _Quirinus_ isn’t big enough for all of us and the APC, but it can be called down remotely, without a pilot, if we run into trouble.” Her eyes shone, and she grinned at them both. “I helped develop that program.”

“Sounds very tech.” Dean grinned back, cutting his eyes to Sam, who rolled his back. 

Once they had boarded the shuttle, they were directed onto the ground transport vehicle, which was huge and tank-like and locked into place by the shuttle’s hatch. Sam recognized it as an advanced version of the Armored Personnel Carriers Dad had insisted they know how to drive. It actually looked like it might be able to withstand a xenomorph attack, Sam thought as he climbed on. He hoped they wouldn’t have to test that theory.

“We’re going to be dropped directly onto the surface already in this,” Charlie explained. “Standard security drop. The shuttle can’t get in close enough, so we drive part of the way. This APC’s got a monitoring center too, so those of us stuck on that job don’t even have to get out.”

“Which is how I’ll be guaranteeing your safety, as promised,” Lieutenant Alfie said from behind them.

 _Mine, maybe_ , Sam thought, chest tightening. 

The seats were crammed in along the walls in two lines, facing each other, with barely enough room for everyone’s knees. Sam strapped himself in between Dean and Charlie at the end of one of the lines, with the lieutenant and Naomi and Elkins directly opposite them. Meg Masters dropped into the seat next to Dean and gave Sam a sarcastic smile, staring pointedly at his eye patch. “Just ignore her,” Charlie muttered. “She thinks Academy grads are dead weight. Too bad, she’s kinda hot.”

Sam glanced over to see Meg purring something at Dean, who was giving her a look he usually reserved for reconstituted space food. “I think Dean’s more her type, sorry,” he whispered back.

“Poor guy.” Charlie laughed and nudged her shoulder against his. It was odd, having so much physical contact with someone who wasn’t Dean. Unconsciously, Sam reached for Dean’s arm. When he saw the android, Henriksen, board next, he stiffened. But Henriksen bypassed the line of seats, heading for what Sam realized must be the APC’s command center. 

Once everyone else was seated, Naomi looked at Lieutenant Alfie, who nodded and gestured for attention. “At ease, everyone,” he said, his voice echoing around the narrow space. 

“Where’s the gear?” Sam asked suddenly, looking around in alarm. No one had guns or flamethrowers or even proper clothing on, not for what they would be facing. Meg Masters had bare arms, for God’s sake.

“Loaded in the cargo hold underneath,” Dean, to his surprise, replied. “I helped load it on.”

Elkins grinned. “Did it a damn sight better than any of the others, too.” To Sam he said, “We’ll be gearing up once we arrive at the colony’s main station.”

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Naomi put in. “I promise, we’ve taken every step we can to ensure everyone’s safety. Even with a few,” her eyes moved to Dean, “last-minute additions.”

It seemed like almost no time at all had passed before a woman’s voice blared over a speaker, “ _Entering atmosphere now_.” The shuttle dipped to one side, the struts whining, and Sam shuddered, remembering the last descent onto this planetoid. He closed his eye, lacing his fingers through Dean’s while the shuttle bumped and groaned its way down toward the surface. 

“How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant?” he heard Dean ask. Sam opened his eye a slit to see that Alfie was clutching at the restraints so hard his knuckles were white.

“Thirty-eight,” Alfie replied promptly. “Simulated.”

“How many combat drops?” Charlie asked curiously.

“Well… two. Including this one.”

“Lieutenant Babyface indeed,” Dean muttered in Sam’s ear.

Several moments later, Sam heard the navigator’s voice over the comm again. “ _Preparing for drop,_ ” she said. “ _Henriksen, acknowledge_?”

“ _Ready, Annie_.”

“ _Opening hatch. Drop sequence initiated_.”

A moment later, a jolt went through the APC, throwing them all against their restraints. Sam lost Dean’s hand, but a moment later he felt his brother’s fingers wrapping around his again, and the knot inside his chest loosened. Dean was still with him.

For now.

“ _Surface landing complete_ ,” Henriksen announced a few tense minutes later. “ _How are you guys holding up back there_?”

Everything seemed to go by at high speed after that. Before Sam knew it, they were driving up toward the main station, the video feeds showing them the landscape around them. Parts of it looked like Sam remembered, like a long-solidified lava flow, but wide swaths around them had been leveled, smoothing out the furrows and dips in the ground. The air was different too; it was still murky, heavy with what seemed like an approaching storm, but it was much less windy and clearer than it had been. He could see more than a few meters in any direction, now, and if Naomi and Charlie were right, they could even breathe it. 

“Electricity’s on,” Charlie pointed out as they roared up to the main station. It was located several hundred meters away from what she had identified as the generator for the atmospheric processors. Both buildings were immense; the station, which included residential quarters, the medical lab, and all the terminals monitoring the terraforming process, was a sprawling complex, two stories high and probably over half a mile in length. The generator, which Sam could only barely make out in the distance, was a towering structure at least thirty meters high. Both of them blazed with lights.

“All right!” Elkins said as the APC jerked to a stop outside of what had to be the entrance to the complex. “Get out, grab your gear and suit up. We’re going in squads. Wandell, you’re in charge of squad two. Middleton, hang back and help Creaser run the feeds.”

“Of course,” Charlie muttered.

“Winchester, you’re with me too.” Elkins jerked his head at Dean, who got to his feet.

“What?” Gabriel yelped. “That crazy flyboy’s coming with us?”

“What, scared you won’t be the worst one on your squad anymore?” Meg snarked.

“Dean Winchester is rated higher in security than anyone here except Sergeant Elkins and me,” the lieutenant said, his tone so cold Sam was impressed. So was Gabriel, if the way his mouth snapped shut was any indication. “He’s going in, and Sam’s going to help me monitor the situation from here.” He made a quick gesture toward the exit. “Go.”

They went. Dean was the last to leave, after giving Sam’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Sam wanted to go after him, keep him in sight, but forced himself to follow Lieutenant Alfie to the monitoring station in the aft of the APC instead. Dean would be wearing a camera feed, same as the others, he told himself. He could watch Dean that way, see what his brother was seeing. He’d know if something happened. 

_When_ something happened.

Despite the cramped size, the monitoring station was impressive. An array of screens greeted him when he sat down next to Charlie. Martin sat on her other side, with Lieutenant Alfie standing behind them, back enough to watch all of the screens at once. Even though he didn’t recognize some of the switches or buttons, a lot of the equipment looked familiar, and Sam felt himself relax a fraction. He remembered this from the required tech classes at the Academy.

“Two camera angles for every one of them,” Charlie said, pointing as a screen in the middle labeled ‘Adams’ went from static to a split screen showing two grainy views of the complex. One by one, all the other screens flickered to life. “We’ll have feeds from all of them so we can see what they do. Audio is through these headsets.” Anticipating him, she nodded at the lowermost screen to the right, labeled ‘Middleton.’ “Dean’s going to have my gear on. Watch that screen for him. You’re monitoring him and Masters. I’ve got Elkins, Hudson, Bates, and Adams, and Martin will cover squad two, Wandell, Lowry, Franklin, and Bell.” She glanced over her shoulder at Alfie. “Go ahead, sir?”

Alfie nodded and put on a headset of his own. “First squad up. Wandell, get yours in a cordon. Watch the rear. Slow circle.”

Elkins’s voice blared over a speaker. “ _Got it. Masters, take point. Let’s move._ ” 

On Dean’s screen, Sam saw Meg Masters, now wearing some kind of body-covering gear — acid-resistant, he hoped — edge into view, a smart gun held in her hands. On one of Charlie’s screens, he could see Dean himself, his mechanical hand glinting brightly as he followed the others in a controlled pattern toward the door. As promised, Dean held a flamethrower. Sam let himself watch Dean for a moment, before jerking his gaze back over to his own screens.

Naomi sat down behind Sam. “They’ll be fine,” she murmured.

Sam didn’t say anything.

Time seemed to crawl by as Sam watched the team approach the building. The door was sealed, but a few keystrokes from Charlie and it slid soundlessly open. The voices of the team faded into the background as he studied the two screens he was monitoring, taking in the sight of the inside of the complex. It looked like every other facility Sam had been in: long corridors, blank walls, various pieces of furniture and equipment organized in clusters. But one thing was off.

“It’s totally empty,” Alfie said slowly. “Both squads, do a scan of the area.”

All of the screens showed the same thing from varying angles. Equipment was there, screens were on, cups were scattered throughout at various workstations, but there wasn’t a sign of any life at all, human or alien.

“Squads, split up,” Alfie ordered. “Search by twos. First squad, check over the industrial and tech centers. Wandell, take the upper level and do residential areas. Use your motion trackers.”

“Be careful, all of you,” Sam blurted. “These things are fast, and they tend to attack from above, so you might not see them even if the motion tracker does. Keep an eye out, and don’t fire unless you absolutely have to.”

“ _Or you have a flamethrower,_ ” Dean’s voice crackled over the speaker.

Fortunately for Sam, Dean and Meg paired off, so he didn’t have to divide his attention from his brother. The two of them followed a hallway lined with what looked like offices, Meg on the left, Dean on the right. At first the rooms didn’t look too bad; a few overturned chairs, maybe some upset papers, but as they reached the end of the hallway, the rooms become more and more disheveled until they were outright trashed, puddles on the floor, equipment broken and in pieces, deep furrows in the walls. But there was no sign of movement from either of the motion trackers.

“Nothing,” Alfie muttered to himself behind them. “Looks like something went down, but there’s no one _there_... What happened here?”

“ _Hell if I know_ ,” Elkins replied. “ _Teams, report in. Anyone found anything?_ ”

Negative answers from all of the search pairs flowed back over the headset. “ _There’s no one, no bodies either, just signs of a fight_ ,” Meg summed up. “ _But where could they all have gone?_ ”

“ _We ain’t finished searching yet. Hudson and I are heading to the medical bay now,_ ” Elkins said. “ _Winchester, Masters, you head over here too. Wandell, you guys about done up there, or do you want me to send Bates and Adams to help?_ ”

“Wait,” Sam said as something on the edge of Meg’s screen caught his eye. “Masters, turn to the left. Dean, look at that. Doesn’t it look like…?”

“ _Acid_ ,” Dean confirmed.

And there it was. A huge hole gaped in a wall in the corner where two hallways met, the edges melted and curling, the floor pitted around the opening. A chill went through Sam’s entire body. “They took them through that,” he whispered. “Where is that? Does that lead somewhere?”

“Hang on, I’ve got the station schematics,” Charlie said, her fingers flying over the keys. “They’re in the hallway by the offices, where it meets up with the medical bay… There’s nothing back there except storage. Except… One level down, in the underground maintenance level, there’s an access tunnel that goes over to the atmospheric generator.” 

“ _Check this out_.” Gabriel’s braying voice, sounding serious for once. “ _This is right outside the medical bay, guys._ ” All five of them looked over at his screen. He was looking up at the ceiling, showing a similar gaping hole. Then the screen shifted as he looked down at his feet at another hole, revealing pipes and conduits, all eaten away.

“Acid blood,” Naomi said softly.

“ _Winchester_?” Elkins’s voice was grim. “ _You’d better come see this._ ”

Dean’s and Meg’s screens shifted as they both turned and headed for the medical bay proper. Sam could just see Dean on the periphery of one of Meg’s views, body tense as he marched with the flamethrower held out and ready, fire licking the tip. 

Please, Sam thought.

The medical bay was also abandoned, but strangely, far more intact than the other nearby areas. “It was locked,” Charlie whispered to him. “I had to override the security codes. I don’t think anything got in, but there’s no sign of movement either — oh. _Oh_.”

And Sam saw it too: a tiny blip of movement on Dean’s motion tracker, followed by an answering blip from Meg’s. “Is that Elkins and Hudson setting them off?” he asked, but he already knew.

“ _No_ ,” Dean’s voice replied, and Sam jerked his gaze up to Dean’s screen as it focused on something in the center of the room. “ _It’s them._ ”

On the screen were several stasis tubes, the kind used for biological specimens. Sam recognized them from the _Bellerophon_ , though these were bigger, filled with a fluid that would allow for movement. And in two of them—

“ _Holy shit!_ ” Gabriel yelped, voice tinny over the comm. “ _Those are goddamn aliens!_ ”

“ _What did we tell you_?” Dean said dryly.

*****

The fuckers were exactly as ugly as Dean remembered. They squirmed around in their specimen tubes, spidery legs scrabbling uselessly. When Gabriel leaned in close to peer at one, it jammed its nasty ovipositor against the glass and pulsated for a few moments.

“Aw, look,” Meg said sweetly. “I think it likes you!”

Elkins stepped up next to Dean, rifle drawn tight against his chest. “Your walking sex organ?” he asked.

Dean just nodded. The last time he had seen one of those little shits was in the _Bellerophon_ ’s lab, after Sammy had gotten acid blood in the face. That fucker had been dead. There were some dead ones in other stasis tubes here, curled up like so many dead spiders, but these two were very much alive, and Dean wanted to know why. As he looked at the tubes, he realized that there were file folders sitting on top of each one. He snagged one and leafed through it, making sure his camera could focus on the contents.

“You seeing this, Sammy?” he asked.

“ _Copy_ ,” Sam replied. His voice was thin, even considering the quality of the transmission. “ _They removed the living specimens surgically, before they had a chance to implant the embryo. ‘Subject: Marachuk, John L. Died during procedure.’ They killed him getting it off_.”

Which sounded familiar. Gordon had nearly died when Sam and Cas and the captain had tried get him free of the facehugger alien. Not that keeping him alive had done him, or any of them, any good, Dean thought sourly. 

“ _Just those two are alive_?” Dean could hear Naomi ask. 

“Isn’t that enough?” Dean asked. His fingers itched with the need to burn the bastards, to smash their bodies into a pulp and leave them nothing more than a greasy smear.

Elkins came up beside Dean, clapped him on the shoulder. “Relax, they ain’t going anywhere.”

Dean just nodded. With any luck, nuking the planetoid from orbit was still on the table.

A loud beeping noise made all of them jump, even Elkins. Dean looked down at his motion tracker, followed the bright dot across his screen. “Sarge, whatever it is, it’s alone and it’s moving fast.”

Elkins’s face was grim. “Wandell,” he snapped into his comm, “any of your team in D-block?”

“ _Negative, sir. We’re all in Operations._ ”

Elkins motioned to Meg and Gabriel. Meg went in front with the smart gun, the others close behind, with Dean’s motion tracker beeping at them more and more rapidly as they made their way out of the medical bay and down the corridor toward what was left of the kitchen.

“It’s moving,” Dean said. 

“Which way?” Elkins asked.

He scowled at his tracker. “This thing needs a fucking vertical axis. I can’t tell if it’s above, below, or in front of us.”

“Just keep going.”

“Don’t worry,” Meg purred, glancing back to shoot him a condescending smile. “I’ll save you from the big bad bugs.”

“Behind you!” Dean pointed, and the beeping of the tracker merged into a solid tone.

Meg turned, laying a line of fire out. The shots lit up the darkened kitchen for an instant, just long enough for Dean to make out a shape against the wall. He lunged forward, knocked Meg’s smart gun up as she opened fire again. The rounds hit the ceiling, and tiles came crashing down around them.

She whirled on him. “You fucker!”

Dean ignored her and pushed past, following the darting shape down and under the metal cabinets. The tracker howled in his hand, so he handed it back to one of the others. Someone — Elkins, probably — handed him a light, and he scanned the floor for evidence of what he’d seen.

“ _What is it, Dean_?” Sam asked.

Just then, the light fell on a small, dirty shape. A kid, maybe nine, eyes wild and white, obviously terrified. Her dark hair was in a tangled halo around her face, and she had dirt smudged over every inch of her. “Hey,” Dean said, in his most reassuring voice. He reached for the kid with his good hand, but as soon as he connected, she was off like a shot.

They all scrambled after her, Gabriel lunging to grab an ankle, but he jumped back with a yelp. “Shit! The brat bites!” The kid turned a corner, ducked into a ventilation shaft. Dean quickly stripped himself of his body armor and dove after her. It was a tight fit, even without the protective gear, but he could see her ahead and hear her breathing in the dark. It was soon blotted out by the roar of ventilation turbines, though, so when the shaft opened up directly under one of them, he wasn’t surprised by it.

What surprised him was that the kid had turned the space under the turbine into a nest. There were blankets, pillows, a few toys, and the remains of emergency rations scattered around. She’d been living down here a long time, he realized, taking it in. 

A rustle drew his attention, and he turned to see her flatten herself against the far wall, mouth open in a silent scream. 

Dean knew that look.

He put his hands up. “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She lunged to the side, thrashing, and scrambled her way back toward the shaft. But Dean was on her before she could make it in and wrapped his arms tight around her, holding her in place until the fight left her little body. “Shh,” he whispered. 

“ _Dean_?”

“They’re not all dead. Not all of them, Sammy,” Dean whispered. “We found a survivor.”

Half-buried in the garbage around them, Dean saw a picture. The image was dark and blurred, but Dean thought he could recognize the little girl in it. She was cleaner, hair smooth and combed instead of wild and matted. When he turned the picture over, he could see a name, ‘Krissy Chambers,’ scribbled on the back.

“Krissy?” Dean asked. She flinched, then reached for the picture and snatched it out of his hands. Otherwise, she remained limp in his arms as he climbed back up to the kitchen. “Let’s get her to the APC,” he told Elkins. “It’s not safe here.”

“Right,” Elkins replied. He gestured to Meg and Gabriel and told them, “Continue the sweep. I want to make sure this area is clear. And Masters? Try not to shoot Hudson this time.”

Meg just shrugged. “No promises, sir.”

The three of them made it back outside without any incidents, Krissy trembling in Dean’s arms the entire time. Dean didn’t know how long she’d been alone, but it was definitely too long. Even when they got her inside and had her seated in the back of the APC, her eyes stared vacantly at nothing.

“Think, Krissy,” Lieutenant Alfie implored. “Start at the beginning and tell us everything.”

Dean shook his head. “She’s not gonna talk,” he said. “Not right now. We shouldn’t keep crowding her like this.”

Naomi turned to Charlie. “Is she healthy?”

Charlie shrugged. “Borderline malnutrition, as far as I can tell. No permanent damage, but we’re probably dealing with PTSD, maybe some retrograde amnesia. We could get Henriksen to look at her, he’s got more medical training than I do.”

Naomi shook her head. “No, that’s fine,” she said with a glance at Dean.

Alfie looked flustered, neat hair finally out of place, aggravated expression on his too-young face. “Total brain lock-down,” he announced. “I doubt we’ll get anything useful out of her at all.”

Dean stepped in, then, knocking Alfie out of his way with his shoulder. “Give it a rest,” he snapped. He knelt down next to the kid, brushed her tangled curls out of her eyes. “Hey, kid. You don’t talk much, do you? That’s okay, when I was a kid, I saw some stuff and I didn’t feel much like talking, either.”

Sam came up next to him, a steaming cup of something in his hands. “Hey, I warmed up some of the rations. She needs to eat something.” He turned and looked at the others, who finally all backed off, leaving Krissy with just him and Sam. 

Dean nodded and took the mug, pressed it to her mouth and tipped it up gently. She drank mechanically, dribbles of soup running down her chin. Sam handed Dean a damp rag, and Dean wiped at her face. “Oops, looks like I made a clean spot, Krissy. I guess I’ll have to do the whole thing, huh?”

She clutched tighter at the picture in her hand, and for the first time, Dean started to notice something a little off.

“Dean?” Sam asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Sammy, this picture... It’s not her.” He took her hand in his, turned it so Sam could see. In better light, with the kid’s face wiped clean, it was clear. The girl in the picture was lighter-skinned, with a sharp chin and smooth hair. Even if they got this kid’s hair untangled, it would still be a mass of curls.

Sam folded his arms. “If she’s not Krissy, then who is she?”

“Newt.”

Dean nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked back to the kid, saw her dark eyes were fixed on him. “What did you say?”

“My name,” she replied, voice whisper-soft. “It’s Josephine, but everyone calls me Newt. Except Krissy. Krissy’s my stepsister. She calls me Josie. That’s her.”

“Newt,” Dean repeated. “All right, Newt it is. I’m Dean, and this tall guy with the eyepatch is my little brother Sam. I call him Sammy.”

She nodded. “Dean. Sammy.”

Sam knelt on the floor next to Dean, took her hands in his. “What happened to Krissy, Newt?”

“She’s gone, like our parents, like everyone else. We were together for a long time after the others got taken, but we got separated. So she’s gone, and there’s nothing you can do.”

There was nothing Dean could say to that, so he didn’t. He gently took the photograph from her hand and wiped it clean with the rag. It was the only thing he could do for her.

When he handed the picture back, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“Sam, Dean,” Charlie called from the monitoring station. “Come quick. Gabriel found something.”

They left Newt with the mug of soup and her picture, and crowded around the monitors. “Hudson,” Alfie said. “What did you find?”

“ _Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen! I found ‘em!_ ”

“The colonists?” Naomi asked. “How?”

“ _Got into the main database, finally. Turns out the colonists are all implanted with tracking devices. I guess it’s an easy way to keep track of everyone on a giant fucking mudball like this._ ”

“Are they alive?” Alfie asked.

“ _Unknown, sir. But it looks like all of them are over at the atmospheric processing generator. Sub-level C under the south tower._ ”

Dean exchanged a look with Elkins. “Better suit back up, Winchester,” Elkins said. “Break time is over.”

Before they left, Dean looked in one last time on Sam, who had gone back to check on Newt. The kid was now huddled in a huge sweater, her hands lost in the sleeves, while Sam tried to drag a comb through her springy hair. Dean was pretty sure the sweater was Sam’s, especially once he noticed that Sam was just in a t-shirt now. The hem fell past Newt’s knees. “I’m not sure that’s a good fit,” he said.

“She was cold,” Sam said, glancing up. The skin around his good eye tightened. “You’re going back out there.”

“We’ve gotta go check on the colonists,” Dean told him. “You okay?”

Sam nodded, though he didn’t look happy. “I’ll get back on the monitoring station. Be careful, okay?” He handed the comb to Newt, who looked at it like she had no idea what it was, and came over to Dean. After a brief, fierce hug, Dean left him there and joined Elkins.

Meg and Gabriel met up with them in the main station’s halls. The second team was only a few minutes behind them, so they started the climb through the gaping hole burned between the offices and the medical bay, down toward the access tunnel Charlie had mentioned earlier. It was dark and damp, and Dean was glad to have his flamethrower to illuminate the little he could see. The pitted tunnel hissed under their protective gear, and Dean hoped that the acid’s potency had gone down enough that it wouldn’t have the same effect on the gear as it had had on his hand back on the _Bellerophon_. The mechanical hand made some nasty grinding noises as he thought about it, but Dean just ignored it and gripped his flamethrower tighter.

“ _I’m here, Dean_ ,” Sam’s voice said in his ear.

As they made it down to the access tunnel and started following it toward the generator, the acid-burned metal gave way to a thick, ribbed structure that gave the tunnel walls the look of being covered with giant spider webs. “Are you seeing this, Sammy?” Dean asked. He knocked on the structure with the knuckles of his mechanical hand. It echoed dully. “It’s like, I don’t know, some kind of resin?”

“ _What the hell?_ ” Sam breathed. 

“ _Elkins, looks like you’re coming in on sub-level B._ ” Alfie, sounding unnerved. “ _There’s an access door on the outside of the atmospheric generator’s main tower; we’ll park the APC right outside in case we find more survivors. Proceed inside and head down to C._ ”

“Roger that, boss,” Elkins replied. “Let’s get it moving, sweethearts.”

As they moved further in, the hum of machinery reverberated around them. The crap covering the walls didn’t muffle the sound like Dean thought it should. Their footing got wet and slippery and, as they made their way down the ramp connecting sub-levels B and C, it got hotter and more humid. Fragments of furniture, of tools and equipment, and eventually human remains started to appear in the walls around them. Dean spotted what looked like a leg bone woven into the structure to his right, and what was unmistakably the crown of a skull just above eye level a few steps later.

“What the fuck, man?” Meg muttered. 

“ _They took the colony apart for building material,_ ” Naomi said, her voice hushed and awed. “ _But what were they building_?”

Sam answered, “ _It’s a nursery._ ”

And as they went on, Dean saw that Sam was right. There were the remains of the spidery creatures, hardened forms of giant eggs, and, worst of all, whole people cocooned in the walls, ribcages broken open, blood clotted and dark.

“Oh god,” someone said behind Dean, and then there was the sound of retching.

“Hold it together,” Elkins said. “Weapons ready.”

“ _Careful,_ ” Sam warned. “ _Sergeant, Dean, you’re directly under the heat exchanges. One wild shot and the entire place goes up._ ”

“Fuck,” Dean breathed.

“I agree,” Elkins grunted. “All right, flamethrowers to the front. People, if you fire a shot off, make damned sure it counts.”

“Jesus,” Gabriel panted. “It’s already goddamned hot down here, and now we gotta rely on flamethrowers?”

Dean ignored him and moved up to flank Elkins, and one of the privates from the other team — Lowry, O. was emblazoned across the breast of her uniform — stepped forward with her flamethrower clutched tight. They continued forward, slowly, climbing around the debris all around them. There was no movement, and besides the deafening hum of the reactor, no sound.

“ _Elkins, to your right,_ ” Alfie said as the movement tracker suddenly let out a series of beeps. “ _What is that?_ ”

They came to a stop, angled their lights to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that the babyfaced lieutenant had seen. There was a dark shadow, darting around close to the floor. Not fast enough to be one of the aliens, Dean decided, and too big to be one of the spidery facehuggers. He slung the flamethrower over his shoulder, laid his good hand on Elkins’s arm, and moved forward.

“ _Dean, what are you doing_?” Sammy, his voice raw and panicked.

“It’s okay,” Dean said. “I know what I’m doing.” He crouched low to the ground, until he was nearly crawling through the gross shit on the floor. But he was rewarded after a moment with the sight of another survivor, pale-faced and familiar and alive.

“Krissy Chambers, I presume?”

*****

Newt insisted on coming with him when Sam went back to the monitoring station. She didn’t say anything, just followed him out there and then looked at him with those big eyes when he’d gently told her to go back. In that look, he knew exactly what she’d been through, and that it must have been worse for her. She’d been out there for much longer, at nine years old, and she’d lost her stepsister. She’d been alone.

At least he hadn’t lost Dean. Not yet.

Heart aching, he risked a touch to her shoulder. “We’re watching vid feeds,” he explained, not sure exactly how to say this. Dean was better with kids than he was. “Some people are going to look for the other colonists.”

She nodded. “Like Dean.”

“Like Dean. And they might… they might find something awful.”

She nodded again. “The monsters,” she said simply. But she didn’t move, and Sam just looked at her standing there, her thin arms clutching the picture to her chest, his sweater almost falling off her narrow shoulders. He didn’t want to make her go sit alone, if she didn’t want to. But he also didn’t want to make her watch something that might be even worse. She seemed to sense it, because she reached out and laid a hand on his bare arm. “It’s okay,” she said.

“Oh, just let her stay,” Charlie said. Sam glanced at Alfie, who hesitated, then finally shrugged. Martin shrugged too, mumbling something about how he didn’t mind as long as she kept out of the way. Only Naomi looked like she wanted to say something, but one look at Sam made her close her mouth.

Sam put the headphones back on, and Newt stood next to his chair, close enough that the rolls she’d made in the sleeves of his sweater kept brushing against his arm. “Is that Dean?” she asked, pointing at Meg’s screen. Dean was on it, recognizable mostly from the fire licking from the end of his flamethrower. He and the others were in the access tunnel leading toward the atmospheric generator, Sam saw.

“Yes. That feed’s coming from a soldier named Meg,” he explained. He pointed at the screen labeled ‘Middleton.’ “That one is Dean’s feed. We can see what he’s seeing this way.”

Newt studied the screens. “They’re in the tunnel to the big tower,” she said, and Sam glanced at her, surprised. There was no reason for a kid to know about the access tunnel. She pushed her hair back out of her face and added, “I was the best at the hiding game. I knew the whole maze. Krissy could only find me half the time, and none of the others ever could.”

“The 'maze'?” Sam repeated. Then he understood. “You mean the air ducts?” He could remember doing that too, playing hide and seek in the air ducts when he and Dean were kids on one of Dad’s ships. No wonder she’d survived for so long.

A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I was the ace. I could hide better than anybody.”

Sam shook his head, smiled at her. “You're really something, ace.”

Behind them, Alfie cleared his throat. “The monitors,” he said in a warning tone.

Right. “I’m here, Dean,” Sam said, turning back the screens.

The pictures from both Meg’s and Dean’s feeds were grainy, but Sam could still make it out when the tunnel changed. Newt clutched at his arm as Dean knocked on the walls, as they saw the changes no human being had made. It looked like Dean and the others were walking through a giant ribcage, almost, or an enormous wasps’ nest. He barely noticed when the APC rumbled to life and Henriksen drove them over toward the generator, just stared at the images unspooling in front of him. It was clearly a structure of some kind, almost like a support lattice, made of resin and junk and human bones. But made to support what? 

Then he realized.

“It’s a nursery,” he said.

The next moment, Newt’s hand clamped down so hard on his arm that he winced, but he didn’t tell her to let go. On the screens, it wasn’t just random bones anymore. There were whole bodies in the walls now, frozen and twisted, cocooned to the walls with what looked horribly like webbing. Huge oval shapes littered the floor in front of them, the tops peeled back like petals to reveal empty cavities inside. Some of the bodies were desiccated, dried flesh stretched over bone, but a horrible number of them looked fresh, except for the shine of white bone and dark blood where their ribcages had exploded outward. An image of Gordon’s chest bursting open flashed across Sam’s memory, and he felt sick. 

“They’re under the hot part,” Newt murmured. “We could never hide there.”

“Maybe they like the heat?” Naomi suggested, voice hushed.

Sam snapped back to the present. He checked the schematics for the atmospheric generator, and saw that Newt was right; Dean and the others were right under the heat exchanges, which meant that any damage could rupture the cooling system. “Charlie,” he hissed, pointing, and her eyes went wide. 

“Careful,” Sam warned, opening a channel to everyone, not just Dean and Meg. “Sergeant, Dean, you’re directly under the heat exchanges. One wild shot and the entire place goes up.”

“We're talking thermonuclear explosion,” Charlie added. “We’d probably get caught in it too, even outside.”

“Shit,” Alfie muttered behind them.

“Newt, maybe you should go in the back,” Sam said distractedly, watching worriedly as Dean moved to the front of the pack. It made sense, he knew that; without the guns, the flamethrowers were their best weapon. But it put Dean right on the front lines.

Sam struggled to keep his breathing even, watching the screens for movement so intently his vision was almost blurring. “I’m staying,” he heard Newt say, and he felt the grip on his arm shift down, until she had her fingers around his wrist.

Behind him, Alfie suddenly leaned forward, peering hard at Elkins’s screen. 

Something had moved.

Sam’s throat closed as he watched Dean’s screen turn toward the moving shadow. The motion tracker suddenly erupted into life, and as he watched, Dean moved toward whatever it was setting it off. “Dean, what are you doing?” he asked, unable to keep the panic out of his voice. 

“ _It’s okay. I know what I’m doing._ ” 

Sam watched, shaking, as Dean followed the movement, watched as the feed went closer and closer to the floor, until the fire from the flamethrower finally threw what Dean was chasing into relief. A girl’s face, pale and smudged, surrounded by a tangle of long hair, with a sharp chin he recognized.

Newt jumped. “Krissy,” she whispered in her soft voice. She let go of Sam and reached toward the display, her fingers hovering over the image of her stepsister’s face. The look on her face seemed to punch Sam right in the gut, both wild joy and terrible fear.

Krissy fought Dean at first, snarling and kicking, but after a moment she collapsed against him. They couldn’t see her anymore, but Sam could hear her through Dean’s comm link. “ _Josie_ ,” she sobbed, “ _I lost Josie, and I can’t find her._ ”

“ _We found her,_ ” Dean said, his voice gentle. “ _She’s safe now, and we’re going to take you back to her, okay?_ ”

“Where’d she go?” Newt whispered next to him.

“Dean’s got her,” Sam told her. “She’s just too close for the cameras to see her.” They were out of the corridor now, he saw, and in the main part of the tower. On the schematics, the room was a huge open space, meant to be kept empty so the cooling system on the generator was ventilated, but the xenomorphs had completely changed it. The whole room looked even more like a wasps’ nest than the tunnel had, with columns and chambers built throughout the space and eggs scattered all over the floor. Sam had a sinking feeling that every one of those chambers held a former colonist.

Was this what had happened to the others on the _Bellerophon_?

“ _Elkins, we’ve got to get her out of here,_ ” Dean said. 

On Meg’s screen, they caught a glimpse of Dean, his arms around Krissy, the flamethrower pushed back awkwardly behind him. “ _Hey, pretty boy, want to give me that flamethrower?_ ” Meg asked, taking a few steps toward Dean. “ _I can take over while—_ ” Then she turned abruptly, and the image on her screen swung around to show the body of a woman plastered to the wall in a nearby chamber, her head hanging down, her skin grayish. She looked like she’d died only a day or two ago.

Then her eyes snapped open.

“ _Sir!_ ” Meg cried. “ _This one’s alive! Hey, hey, you’re gonna be all right, okay? We’ll get you down._ ”

On the screen, the woman’s lips moved. Sam couldn’t hear her, but he knew what she was saying. A cold chill fell over him, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. _Kill me_ , her lips shaped. 

Sam realized what was about to happen a split second before it did. On Meg’s screen, the woman’s body started convulsing, her head jostling on her neck, her shoulders heaving against the webbing. “ _What the—_ ” Meg started, then cut off as the woman’s chest suddenly exploded in a gout of blood.

“Dean!” Sam cried. “Dean, one of them is coming!”

Newt screamed, her fingers a vise on Sam’s wrist. Next to him, Charlie was swearing in a continuous stream, her voice shaking as she swiftly ordered the team over to Meg’s position. “Don’t fire!” Alfie ordered, his own voice shaking even more. “Flamethrowers, forward!”

“My god,” Naomi murmured behind them.

Over the comm, Sam could hear gagging. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair, his knuckles going white as he watched the screens, waiting for the moment he knew was coming. 

In the center of the woman’s chest, something moved. A head emerged, small and fanged, glistening in the low light. It hissed, blood and slime dripping from its tiny jaws, and lunged forward.

A spurt of flame caught it mid-jump. The creature shrieked as another burst of fire caught it from the side. “ _Stay back!_ ” Dean yelled, and he and Lowry moved into view, their flamethrowers trained on the xenomorph as it fell to the floor, still keening, its tail and limbs twitching. Then it went still. Quiet fell over the team, except for the faint sound of gagging.

“ _Well, son of a bitch,_ ” Meg said finally.

Sam’s head was ringing. The walls of the APC seemed to be closing in on him, and he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. This one was dead, he knew it, but there were so many bodies, and they’d only seen a fraction of the whole area. Sixty families, he thought.

“Dean,” Sam croaked.

“ _Sammy, we got it._ ” Dean sounded breathless.

“ _Keep moving,_ ” Elkins ordered over the comm. “ _Franklin, take the girl back—_ ”

The wailing of the motion trackers cut him off. Gasping, Sam looked down at the readouts. Red lights were flashing all over the screen, coming from every direction. Heading right toward them.

“Oh god,” Charlie whispered.

“ _Huh_ ,” Meg said, sounding confused. “ _Hudson, you seeing this? Tracker claims something’s moving._ ”

“ _I don’t see anything._ ” Gabriel’s voice, coming through Meg’s comm. “ _But there’s several of ‘em, coming from in front of us and behind us._ ” 

Alfie leaned forward. “We can't see anything back here, Elkins. What's going on?”

“ _Can’t see anything either, Lieutenant._ ”

“ _Look, I'm telling you, something's moving, and it ain't us,_ ” Gabriel insisted.

Sam looked back up to see Meg’s screens spinning wildly as she turned on the spot, trying to spot them. “ _They’re all around us,_ ” she breathed. In front of her, a burst of fire suddenly lit the room, catching the resinous webbing on fire. Sam could just make out Lowry, burning the walls in a panic. The motion trackers’ beeping increased to a steady whine, but there was still nothing on the screens. 

Someone screamed, then abruptly stopped.

“ _Bates!_ ” Gabriel yelled. “ _They got Bates!_ ” Over on Martin’s side of the monitoring station, one of the screens went blank.

Meg’s ragged breathing filled Sam’s ears. “ _I can’t see them!_ ” 

“ _They come down through the ceilings!_ ” Dean yelled. “ _I told you, your fancy equipment is fucking useless without a third dimension!_ ” Heart racing, Sam watched as Dean’s screens suddenly changed direction, scanning the ceilings overhead. In the corner of the one of the feeds, Sam saw something move. 

A tail.

“Dean, get out of there!” Sam shouted. He spun in his chair, ripping his wrist from Newt’s grasp, and grabbed for Alfie. “Lieutenant, order them to pull out!”

Alfie shook him off, his baby face slack with horror. “Elkins, get the team together!” he ordered, obviously trying to sound calm. “What’s your status?”

“ _We’ve lost Bates! Still can’t — there!_ ” 

They could see something on the screens now. The walls themselves were moving, rippling and bulging. A sibilant hissing filled the static over the comms, and long tails whipped across the cameras’ fields of vision. Writhing shapes were dropping down from the ceilings, all around the team. Even with the fire burning on the walls, Sam could barely make them out. But he knew exactly what they looked like. Next to him, Newt let out a shuddering moan and hid her face. 

“Tracy!” Charlie cried, and another screen went blank.

“ _Let’s rock!_ ” The sound of bullets spraying the corridor echoed in Sam’s ears. Meg was firing the smart gun, he saw, regardless of their warnings. A moment later, half the team joined her, and the sound of gunfire temporarily blotted out the hissing. Then a scream ripped through the air, and another screen went blank, followed by another. 

“Who's firing? I ordered a hold fire, dammit!” Alfie’s voice sounded ragged.

“ _No choice!_ ” Elkins yelled. “ _They’re coming out of the walls!_ ”

“We’ve got to go in after them!” Sam bellowed, ripping the headphones off and jumping to his feet. He didn’t care that he was only supposed to be a consultant, or that Alfie was supposed to be in charge, or that Henriksen was in the driver’s seat. Dean was in there. Dean was in there, and Sam wasn’t going to lose him, not after all this. He’d drive this entire fucking Armored Personnel Carrier in there after him if he had to, risk causing a thermonuclear explosion, whatever it took to get his brother out. 

Alfie ignored him. “Elkins, I want you to lay down suppressing fire with the flamethrowers and fall back by squads to the APC. Are you copying this? Lay down a suppressing fire with the—”

Elkins’s screen went blank.

Alfie reeled back, his eyes wide. “Elkins?” he bleated. “Elkins, do you copy?”

“His vitals have flatlined,” Naomi said in a low voice. “He’s dead, Alfred.”

“Him, and Bates, and Bell, and Adams and Wandell.” Martin sounded hollow. “And Lowry’s hurt, bad.”

“Sir, we’ve got to go help them,” Charlie pleaded, spinning around. “They’re cut off, but if we go in through the entrance to level B—”

“I,” Alfie sputtered. “I don’t—”

But Sam was done waiting. He grabbed for Newt, pushed her into his chair, and snapped the restraints around her small body. Then he shoved past Alfie and Naomi and made for the driver’s seat. Henriksen stood up when he saw him, holding his hands up, but Sam just forced him aside. No one, not even an android, was going to stop him. He threw himself into the seat and hastily did the restraints. Luckily, Henriksen had left the APC’s engine idling. Sam grabbed the controls and searched frantically for the accelerator.

“On the left,” Henriksen murmured, and Sam slammed his foot down on it.

“What are you doing?” Alfie yelled, voice shrill. “Turn around! That's an order!”

The APC leapt forward, and Sam wrapped his hands tight around the steering column and pushed the accelerator all the way down. It wasn’t much different from the armored vehicles he’d learned to drive under Dad’s instructions, except that the accelerator was in a different place. But the steering was the same, and Sam aimed the entire APC for the entrance on B level. If he went in that way and then took a left down the equipment ramp, they’d reach sub-level C after only a few meters. After that, it was just a couple hundred to where the team was being ambushed. He remembered his earlier thought, that this APC was heavily armored enough to withstand a xenomorph attack.

He hoped he was right.

The vehicle broke through the entrance without much resistance. Pieces of the walls crumbled around it, some of the debris striking the transparent shield in front of him, but Sam just gritted his teeth and kept driving. “The ramp!” Henriksen shouted, and Sam turned the APC hard enough that he would have fallen from the seat if not for the restraints. From the sound of a pained shout behind him, at least one person had done just that. 

“Keep driving, I’ll help them!” Henriksen shouted.

They careened down the ramp toward sub-level C, the sides of the APC scraping against the lattice supports the xenomorphs had built, cracking and breaking the chambers as they rolled past. Ahead of them, he could see the flickering glow of fire. “Charlie, tell them we’re coming!” Sam shouted to the back. 

The corridor opened up a few meters ahead, and Sam pushed down on the pedal next to the accelerator, hoping it was the brake. They screeched to a stop just inside the room, and Sam hastily put the gears into neutral. It would be faster to get back out if he left it in gear.

He ran into the back, just in time to see Henriksen pull open the doors. Charlie and Martin stood nearby, both armed with shotguns. Naomi was strapped into one of the chairs and Alfie was lying on the floor, out cold, blood crusting the side of his head. Newt, Sam was relieved to see, was still buckled into his chair by the monitoring station. Behind her, most of the screens had gone blank.

Sam felt cold.

“Come on!” Martin bellowed, and a second later someone tumbled through the opening and onto the floor. Henriksen helped him up. Gabriel, Sam saw, and his heart plummeted. Then another, smaller figure climbed up and into the vehicle, and Newt let out a cry.

Krissy Chambers stumbled to her feet and ran for her stepsister. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw the girls throw their arms around each other, but he couldn’t watch their reunion, not now.

_Where was Dean?_

Meg stumbled in next, her eyes wild, her short hair dripping with sweat. She spun and trained her gun on the door, then yelled, “She’s here already! Get your ass in, now!”

And then Dean was inside. His face was red, and parts of his gear looked like they’d been burned. But he was alive, and in one piece, and Sam nearly collapsed with relief. “Close the doors,” he growled, wiping sweat out of his eyes. “We’re it.”

Sam wanted to hug him, wanted to throw his arms around his brother and never let go. But they weren’t out of danger, not by a long shot, and so he spun on his heel and threw himself back into the driver’s seat. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the doors slowly sliding shut and the babble of voices. His heartbeat was thudding in his ears, and he felt electrified, terror and adrenaline coursing through him so much his hands were shaking. Fumbling, Sam strapped himself back in and put his foot on the accelerator. They were almost out. They were almost safe, or as safe as they could be on this hellhole.

Then he heard the hissing, the same sound he still heard in his nightmares. Gunfire ripped through the air, punctuated by the roar of a grenade exploding, and someone screamed in agony. It didn’t sound like Dean, but what if — what if —

“Sam, _go_!” Dean bellowed, and Sam drove.


	3. Part Three

**Part Three**   


“Martin!” Charlie was screaming in his ear. “We have to go back for Martin!”

Dean pulled her back from the APC’s hatch, which was still hissing from the spray of xenomorph blood. “Martin’s gone,” Dean told her. Gabriel’s grenade had hit the damned creature directly in the face. Even if Martin had survived getting attacked by the xenomorph, the spray of acid blood would have finished him off.

Besides, there was a more pressing matter to attend to. The blast from the grenade had ignited the bank of computers in the back of the APC, and the air was hot and smoky. Dean dug around, looking for an extinguisher, but he couldn’t find one. It was Naomi who pulled it out, from under one of the seats, and sprayed the computers down.

Once Dean was sure that Naomi had it under control, he ran up front to the driver’s area. “Sam, _go_!” Dean shouted. Sam jumped, then threw the APC into drive, jerking them all backwards. Dean nearly lost his footing, but he caught the edge of Sam’s seat and held on with his mechanical hand. Dean was about to say something, but then there was a shadow on the windshield. The glass shattered, showering them in shrapnel, and a xenomorph reached through the opening.

Sam jerked the APC’s controls, slamming the brakes on and throwing them forward again. Dean could hear the others in the back, yelling and cursing, but at least the xenomorph was thrown off too. It landed on the ramp in front of them, hissing. Sam put the APC into gear again and slammed on the accelerator so hard Dean thought the pedal would snap off. The APC’s engine roared, and they pitched forward again. This time Dean couldn’t stay upright, not when they hit the xenomorph and ran it over. 

As soon as he could, Dean scrambled to his feet and pulled himself into the seat next to Sam. The APC made it through walls, tearing holes in everything they connected with, even when they hit the door Sam had ripped through to get inside the generator. The way was open, the xenomorphs left behind, Dean hoped, but Sam wasn’t exactly careful. They punched another hole in the reinforced metal door.

“All right, Sam, we’re out,” Dean said, and reached for his brother. But Sam kept going, throwing the APC across the uneven lava flows. “Sam,” Dean repeated, and looked over. Sam’s knuckles were white on the controls, his face lined and pale. When Dean leaned around Sam’s blind side, he saw that Sam’s good eye was wide and unseeing.

Dean got out of his seat, grabbed Sam’s hands in his own, peeled them away from the controls. Sam’s breaths came in ragged gasps. Dean turned Sam toward him, and as he did the APC slowed and came to a stop.

“Sammy,” Dean said, and pulled Sam tight against him.

“Dean,” Sam whispered, and clung to him.

“It’s okay, Sammy, we got away. We need to head back to the drop site, so they can pick us up and we can leave. Sammy, we’re just going to leave.”

Sam nodded against his chest. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”

He turned back to the controls again, started to drive them, this time slower and with more direction, avoiding the dips and furrows in the rocky landscape. Dean got to his feet, laid his good hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed, and said, “I’m going in the back. Someone needs to take stock, see how many survivors we’ve got.”

“Okay,” Sam said, his voice still small and shaky.

Dean moved back to the back of the APC. They looked a mess, all of them. Even Naomi, who was the dirtiest she’d probably ever been in her life, hair wild and tangled. Alfie was slumped over in one of the seats, his head bleeding through a makeshift bandage, a victim of Sam’s panicked driving, Dean guessed. Henriksen looked cool and collected as usual, but his smile was gone. He frowned slightly as he bandaged up Gabriel’s arm. Dean recognized the blistering red marks on his skin. More acid blood, though not as bad as either he or Sammy had gotten. Meg sat on the seat next to him, fingers wrapped tight on her smart gun, while Charlie sat across from her, staring at the acid-scarred metal of the hatch.

Six of them. Plus Dean himself and Sammy, and the two girls, who still hadn’t let go of each other. Six, out of a group of fifteen.

“Shit,” he said.

“I say we go back,” Meg growled. “Drop in some canisters of CN-20, nerve gas ‘em all. Take them out one by one if we have to.”

“No,” Dean said. “We need to get back to the _Janus_. Fucking nuke the planet from orbit and go. Only way to be sure.”

“I’m not authorizing that action,” Naomi said.

Dean turned on her. “Why the fuck not?” he demanded.

She put her hands up, a mock surrender. “I know this is an emotional moment, especially for you and your brother, but let's not make snap judgments. Let's move cautiously. First, this physical installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it—”

“They can bill me,” Dean gritted out. “We already have a fucking tab running. Now, what’s second?”

Naomi hesitated for a moment. “This is clearly an important species we're dealing with here. We could learn from them. We can't just arbitrarily exterminate them—”

“Bullshit!”

“Yeah,” Meg echoed. “Bullshit. Watch us.”

Gabriel chimed in, “Maybe you weren’t paying attention, here, but we just had our asses handed to us!”

The APC shuddered to a stop, and Sammy came back from the front. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Naomi turned on him. “You were a science intern,” she said. “Surely you understand. There’s so much we could learn about this species if we could just get a good specimen.”

Sam went rigid. “That wasn’t our arrangement,” he said, voice cold and hard. “You said exterminate. Not to study, not to bring back. You lying sack of—”

She cut him off. “Don’t make me pull rank.”

“Rank?” Sam repeated, incredulous. He shot a look over to Charlie. “This is a Colonial Security operation. With Sergeant Elkins gone and Lieutenant Samandriel unconscious, that means the highest ranking officer is Corporal Middleton.”

“Corporal Middleton?” Naomi repeated. “She’s just a tech!”

Charlie stepped forward. “Not just a tech. I’m also trained in security protocol. And I think you’ll find that you have a hard time getting the grunts here to listen to you.” She nodded to Sam, then shot a look to Dean, and reached for her mike. “Annie, do you copy?”

“ _Standing by_.”

“Prepare for dust-off. We’re going to need immediate evac.”

“ _What happened_?”

“We’ll explain once we’re off this mudball.”

“ _Roger that, Charlie. Out._ ”

Charlie nodded, then turned to Dean again. “Nuking the planetoid from orbit? I like that idea. Let’s do it. It’s the only way to make sure we get all of these damn things.”

“This is absurd!” Naomi seethed. “You don’t have the authority to make that kind of decision!”

The sound of a smart gun being cocked silenced her. They all looked at Meg, who had stopped cradling her gun and was checking the sights on it. She looked up, expression a mixture of mock surprise and innocence. “Is the discussion over?” she asked. “Good.”

Dean moved over to the girls, who looked up at him with their dark eyes. “Good news,” he told them. “We’re getting out of here.”

They piled out of the APC with the remains of their gear. The girls remained shepherded between Dean and Sam, and were obviously still reluctant to let go of each other. Dean knew how they felt, but he was too busy helping Henriksen hold up Alfie to hang onto Sam like that.

They watched the sky, the dark blot of the _Portunus_ growing larger in the distance. Soon, they could make out the details, the wings and thrusters, the glow of the exterior lights illuminating the murky air. But as it got closer, it suddenly slipped to the side, the nose dipping low, and the starboard wing clipped the edge of a rocky outcropping.

“What the...” he heard Naomi say behind him.

“Annie!” Charlie cried. 

The ship spiraled out of control, the starboard wing a blazing fireball. “Everyone run!” Dean yelled. He and Henriksen hauled up Alfie as best they could, and Sam scooped up the girls together. They all bolted for cover as the flaming wreckage of the _Portunus_ crashed into the APC, metal fragments flying, debris raining down all around them. The _Portunus_ kept going, tumbling over the landscape, until it collided with the south tower and exploded.

“Fuck,” Dean breathed.

“Dean!” Sam called out. He let go of the girls and climbed across the ground to Dean’s side, hands running over him, searching.

“I’m okay,” Dean told him. “Are you?”

Sam just nodded.

“I’m not!” Gabriel shrieked. “Fucking shit! That was almost all of our firepower right there! We’re never getting off of this place! You hear me? Game over, man, game over!”

“Shut it, Hudson!” Meg snapped. “Before I shut it for you!”

“I guess we’re not leaving then,” Krissy mumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Dean replied.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she told him. “It’s not your fault.”

Newt nodded, then said in her quiet little voice, “We should go. It’s almost dark out, and they mostly come at night.”

“Mostly,” Krissy added.

*****

In the end, there was really only one option left. They salvaged everything they could from the ruined APC, distributed it among themselves, and then headed for the abandoned main station on foot. For the first time, Sam was actually glad Henriksen was there; the android easily carried the still-unconscious Alfie over one shoulder and a heavy bag of munitions over the other, with each hand also carrying equipment. Even the girls helped, both of them taking light bags of rations.

The wind buffeted them as they walked, and Sam tried to shelter Newt and Krissy as best he could. For all the talk of terraforming Naomi had done, it really wasn’t much better than it had been the last time he’d been out here. The air was breathable, that was true, but it felt like breathing smoke. Sam could taste the air, thick and smoggy, and more than once he ended up coughing so hard Dean would shift his own burden in order to rub his back. He could also barely see through the murk, and once or twice his lack of depth perception made him trip on an unseen furrow in the ground. No one spoke as they trudged along, except Gabriel, who was still muttering a litany of doom and gloom under his breath. Sam ignored him, just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The sun was sinking already, and they had to reach the main station before it was gone completely.

_They mostly come at night._

The main entrance was still open, to Sam’s relief. After they were all inside, Charlie set her bags down and punched in several codes on the electric pad by the door. A moment later, the doors slid shut with a bang, followed by another set, these made of solid metal. “I activated the storm barriers,” she said, her voice a weary monotone. “It’ll help keep them out, but we should still set up a barricade. Operations and the medical bay are our best bet; we know from the earlier sweep that they didn’t get into the medical bay, and that area’s already got extra security, so we can just augment it with what we’ve got.”

“Which isn’t much,” Gabriel muttered. “This is pointless, man, we ain't gonna hold out against—”

“Shut the fuck up, Hudson,” Meg snapped. “Don’t drag the rest of us down with you, you sorry sack of shit.”

Gabriel bristled, but Charlie raised her voice, shouting, “Cut it out, both of you! We don’t have time for this!” She glared at them until they both looked down at the floor, then said, “Come on, let’s get moving.”

They made their way through the station, following the same path Sam had watched Dean and Meg take earlier. When they reached the juncture between the offices and the medical bay and the gaping hole melted by the xenomorphs came into view, he stopped. “We’ve got to block that tunnel somehow,” he murmured to Dean, who nodded grimly.

“We will,” Charlie said without looking back. “Let’s get to Operations first.”

Sam nodded, hoisting his own bag back up on his back, and followed the others down the hall.

Once they reached Operations, Charlie activated all the security measures, which involved blast doors and pressure seals and electronic locks that couldn’t be opened from the outside. Sam was sure that, given time, the xenomorphs could still get through, but if they could delay them long enough for a rescue mission to be sent after them, they just might have a shot. Maybe.

“Okay, done,” Charlie said finally, wiping sweat from her brow. “I left the two pressure doors between here and the medical bay open, but otherwise, we’re as cut off as we can get. Time to do an inventory of what we’ve got.”

“I’ll take the lieutenant over to Medical,” Henriksen said, setting down all the equipment he’d been carrying and shifting Alfie to his other shoulder. “See if I can get him to wake up.”

“Not that we need that idiot giving orders again,” Meg muttered darkly.

Henriksen ignored her, which surprised Sam. He knew the android must have heard her, and in Sam’s experience, executive officers didn’t just ignore soldiers who were actively making insubordinate statements. But Henriksen just turned his back on Meg and asked Charlie, “Corporal, do you want to me to start an analysis on the xenomorphs in the lab as well?”

Naomi answered for her, saying, “Yes, Henriksen, that would be helpful.” At Sam and Dean’s looks, she said, reasonably, “Whatever we can find out about them can only help. There was no record of the analysis from the _Bellerophon_ , remember.”

Dean just shook his head, his mechanical fingers clawing at the air.

They spent the next few minutes unpacking the equipment and laying it out across the tables. Newt and Krissy tried to help, but Dean gently redirected them to unpacking all the rations instead and lining them up on an empty shelving unit in the corner. After what seemed like no time at all, they were done. It had seemed like a lot while they’d been lugging it across the ground to the station, but once it was all laid out, Sam’s stomach plummeted. The weapons barely covered two tables.

“Okay, we've got Meg’s smart gun left, with two magazines, and four pulse-rifles, with about fifty rounds each,” Charlie started, indicating the rifles.

“That ain’t good,” Gabriel mumbled. “Fifty rounds don’t mean shit against those things.”

Charlie ignored him. “Fifteen of these M-40 grenades.” She picked up a grenade from a small box and held it up, then set it back down. A small hand snaked in under hers, reaching for it, but Charlie caught it. “Don’t touch that, honey. They’re dangerous.” Krissy made a face, but backed off. Newt handed her one of the colonial security helmets, which she jammed down on her head. The brim fell down past her eyes. Sam had no idea where they’d gotten it.

“There’s also a couple tracking locators,” Charlie continued. She picked them up and tossed them to Sam. “Here, put these on the girls. That way we’ll always be able to find them.”

“Good idea,” Sam said, and gestured to Krissy and Newt. They obediently came over and waited while he puzzled out how the trackers worked. They were different from the ones he’d seen before, but eventually he figured out that the girls wore the banded units on their wrists, while the beacons that showed their locations were clipped to his shirt. 

“Is that the only flamethrower?” Dean demanded.

Charlie looked pained. “Olivia had the other one, and… yeah, it’s the only one. It’s still about half full, at least. But, the good news,” she added hastily, gesturing at a group of four robotic machines that had come out of Henriksen’s load. They looked something like mounted artillery, but as far as Sam could see, there was no way to actually fire them. “We've got these robot-sentries with display and scanners intact. I worked with them at the Academy when they were in development. Totally kickass, in my opinion.”

Sentries, Sam thought. Perfect. “So they fire when they detect motion?” he asked.

Charlie nodded, a glimmer of her old enthusiasm flashing across her face. “They’ve got five thousand rounds each, and we don’t need to be anywhere nearby. If we put them at strategic locations, they’ll kill any aliens that even try to approach, and we’ll be able to see what they do.”

“What about the acid blood?” Dean pointed out. 

“Who cares?” Meg demanded. “Maybe it was a big deal when you were out in fucking _space_ , but it doesn’t matter if we melt a few floors here, not if it keeps those fuckers out.”

“As long as no one gets too close,” Naomi put in smoothly.

A shadow passed over Charlie’s face. “Right.” 

“What about welding plate steel over all the access points into this area?” Sam asked, picturing what he remembered of the blueprints for the station. “We can seal off air ducts, keep them at bay at least for a while.”

Charlie nodded. “Good idea. Can you pull up the schematics for the station? We need to figure out where to place everything. We also need to go take whatever’s left from the kitchen, and—”

“Charlie,” Sam said, and she looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “How long after we're declared overdue can we expect a rescue?”

She hesitated, glancing toward the hall to the medical bay, like she wished Henriksen or Alfie were here to answer for her. Even before she replied, Sam knew it wasn’t going to be good. 

“Seventeen days,” she admitted.

“Seventeen days?” Gabriel yelped. “Are you fucking kidding me? We're not going to last seventeen _hours_! You can block shit off all you like, but those things are going to come in here, just like they did before, and they're going to get us!”

“Can it, Hudson!” Dean barked. “These girls survived longer than that with no weapons and no training. Right?” He pointed at Krissy and Newt, who were both wearing helmets now. As one, they snapped off salutes. Dean turned back to Gabriel. “Now start dealing with it, because we need you and I'm sick of your bullshit.”

“Gabriel, go with Meg and get the food supplies,” Sam said. Part of him privately agreed that they didn’t have much chance, but he wasn’t about to just give in either. He and Dean had survived once, and Newt and Krissy had managed it here, so far. He would do whatever it took to keep them all alive. And if that meant staying calm when someone else was panicking, he would do that. “We’ve got to get every ration this place still has if we want to make it. If you could see about finding plate steel and anything we can use to weld with, that would be even better.”

Meg picked up her smart gun. “You coming, Hudson?”

Gabriel took a shuddering breath. “Okay, okay, I'm on it.” He reached out and grabbed one of the pulse-rifles, then stuffed a couple of the grenades in his pocket and handed a few more to Meg.

“Just relax,” Charlie said as she quickly unsealed the door to the hallway that led to the kitchen. “Comms on, and be quick, okay? It’s almost dark.”

“Charlie,” Sam said after they’d left. He didn’t want to ask this, not with Gabriel around, in case the answer was negative. “What about the other shuttle, on the _Janus_? Didn’t you say it could be called down remotely?”

Charlie sighed and slumped into a chair. “Yeah, but we can’t contact the ship,” she said hollowly. “The colony’s communications were down, remember? As far as I can tell, the problem’s with the dish, which is on top of the atmospheric generator’s north tower.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Good luck trying to get over there.”

“Then we focus on staying alive here,” Dean said firmly.

They brought up the station’s schematics on one of the display tables and leaned over it, studying every detail of the surrounding areas. With the sentry robots, they could cover both ends of the corridor leading to their position, both of which also had pressure doors. The biggest problems were going to be the air ducts and sealing the access tunnel, Sam quickly realized. That, and worrying about how they were possibly going to reinforce the floors and ceiling.

“If we can keep them out of the air ducts, then it’s not a problem,” Charlie argued. “If we weld steel over the openings—”

“That’s if we get any fucking steel,” Dean growled. 

“Fine, but if we can just block the openings somehow, then—”

By the time Meg and Gabriel returned, they had an entire plan worked out. Sam had advocated putting two of the sentries in the access tunnel from the atmospheric generator, as the xenomorphs were likely to try it first. The other two would be put behind the pressure doors, on either end of the corridor. Newt and Krissy had even come up with the idea of using the metal tabletops from the office desks to cover the air ducts, after pointing out where each and every opening was. “You really are aces,” Sam said, ruffling Newt’s curly hair. She smiled tiredly and ducked her head. Krissy saluted him again, grinning.

“We got it!” Gabriel announced after Charlie had let them back in. He seemed a lot calmer now that he’d been given a purpose, Sam noted. “Found a whole bunch of welding equipment in the storage area next to that fucking acid hole. Steel plating too.”

“We also got the food,” Meg added, spilling a bunch of cans across one of the empty tables. “So what’s the plan, Middleton?”

“What _is_ the plan?” a tired voice asked from behind them. Sam turned to see Lieutenant Alfie standing in the doorway leading from the medical bay. He had a bloodied gauze bandage wrapped around his head and dark circles under his eyes, but otherwise seemed all right. He came over, took a seat around the table, and leaned over to study the display.

Charlie quickly filled him in. Alfie nodded after each point, then scrubbed a hand over his face and said, “Good work, Corporal. Everybody, let’s get to work.”

They split up after that. Charlie and Gabriel went to work on setting up the sentry robots, while Dean and Meg took on the task of welding the tabletops to the air duct openings. After a moment’s hesitation, Alfie went with them. “Finally condescending to work with us grunts?” Meg asked archly as they went out the door. Alfie didn’t deign to reply.

“Sammy, you coming?” Dean asked before they went through the door. Sam hesitated, glancing over at the girls, who were sitting on the floor now, leaning against each other, their heads lolling. Naomi was nearby, organizing the rations Meg and Gabriel had brought in, so they wouldn’t be alone, and he wanted to stick with Dean. They’d been separated enough on this mission, and the last thing he wanted was to watch his brother go off into danger without him, again.

“Someone needs to be here to calibrate the sentries with the computers,” Alfie pointed out before Sam could say anything. “You were trained as a science officer, right?”

He nodded reluctantly, and with that, his brother and Meg and Alfie left. Dean glanced over his shoulder as he left, and Sam held on to that look. Then the door slid shut, and they were gone.

Sam stood by the door for a long moment, staring at it. Until Charlie contacted him, there wasn’t anything he could do, but he couldn’t just stand here like an idiot until Dean came back. So he gathered the girls up in his arms, marveling at how light they were, and carried them down the hall to the medical bay. There would be cots in there, and blankets and pillows. They could get a real rest, for the first time in a long time.

It turned out there was only one cot, but that was enough. He laid them down on it, helped them get under the sheet. Once they were covered, he knelt next to the cot and smoothed Newt’s hair out of her eyes, then rubbed a thumb over a smudge of dirt on Krissy’s cheek. “You two get some sleep now, okay? You’re very tired.”

“I don't want to,” Newt whispered. “I have scary dreams.”

“I don’t,” Krissy said, but the haunted look in her eyes said otherwise.

Sam took a deep breath and pushed away the memories of all the nightmares that had kept him awake, night after night. He knew all too well what kind of dreams they must have. He glanced around the room, wondering what he could do to help other than stay there with them. The medical bay was crowded, full of equipment that looked like it had been crammed in willy-nilly, but after a moment he spotted a portable space heater half under a tissue analysis machine. He pulled it over and switched it on, watching as the coils lit up with a warm orange glow. “There,” he tried. “That will help keep the nightmares away.”

The girls exchanged glances, and for a moment he saw himself and Dean in them. Like them, these two had been through far more than they should have, too young. Then Krissy turned back to him and said, “My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones.”

“But, there are,” Newt whispered.

Sam nodded. “There are.”

“Why do they tell kids that?” Krissy asked, betrayal all over her voice.

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “No one ever told me or Dean that. But most of the time, it's true, I guess.”

“But not here,” Krissy said.

“No, not here,” Sam agreed. He smoothed their hair back one more time, then got to his feet. He only made it a step toward the door before both of them grabbed for his hand, panic on their small faces.

“Don't go! Please,” Newt begged.

Part of him wanted to stay with them, to guard their sleep the way Dean had done for him on Gateway Station. But Dean and the others were still out there, and they needed his help. He crouched back down and told them, “I need to go help. But I'll be right in the next room, and with these,” he touched the locators on their wrists, then put his palm over the two beacons clipped to his shirt, “we’ll always be able to find you. And, see that camera right up there?” He pointed at the surveillance camera above the door. The girls both twisted their heads to look up at it. “I can see you through that, all the time, to see if you're safe. Okay?”

Slowly, they both nodded.

Sam bent his head and kissed Newt’s forehead, then Krissy’s, just the way Dean had done when they were kids. “Now go to sleep,” he whispered. “And don't dream.”

He left them there, curled around each other, the glow of the heater burnishing their skin golden. Closing the door, he engaged the lock and went back to Operations. Naomi had vanished, which gave Sam pause until he realized that she must have gone to check on Henriksen and the xenomorph analysis in the lab. He started in that direction, but then Charlie’s voice came on the comm, calling for help.

Quickly, he sat down at the terminal Charlie had indicated and followed her instructions. After a few minutes, the displays for all four of the robot-sentries flashed up on the screen bank in front of him, each with a large ‘5000’ emblazoned across the top. “Got it,” he said. A moment later, C gun’s count jumped to ‘4998’.

“ _Everything’s working on our end,_ ” Charlie replied. 

“ _Yeah, we stopped a big bad wastebasket_ ,” Gabriel added.

“ _We’re just about finished too._ ” Alfie’s voice. “ _Everyone, head back to Operations._ ”

Sam jumped to his feet and headed for the door, waited a tense few moments until it slid open and Dean was there. Sam grabbed for him and pulled him inside and into a hug, burying his face in Dean’s neck. Dean hugged him back, his mechanical hand pressing painfully into Sam’s back, but Sam didn’t care. 

“Jesus, out of the way,” Gabriel grunted, shoving at them.

The six of them gathered around the terminal and sat watching the screens. The bullet counts stayed static. “So they’re not coming yet,” Alfie said finally. 

“Anyone got a deck of cards?” Meg cracked.

“Good news,” Henriksen announced, peeking into the room. “The molecular acid oxidizes after the creatures die, completely neutralizing it after just a couple minutes. I can’t say for sure if it’s true of the second form, though, not without a specimen.”

“So it means nothing, basically,” Dean muttered.

Henriksen shrugged. “It might. It might not. You want me to do this analysis or not?” He vanished back toward the lab before Dean could answer.

“At least those facehuggers can’t implant that bastard,” he muttered to Sam.

Sam frowned. “You know, that’s been bothering me. Each one of those things comes from an egg, right? We saw them down there, and Gordon saw them too, remember.”

Everyone nodded. 

Sam took a deep breath. “So, what's laying the eggs?”

The room fell silent. Then Gabriel said, “Hey, maybe it's like an ant hive.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Bees, idiot. Bees have hives.”

“You know what I mean. There's, like, one female that runs the whole show.”

“A queen,” Charlie said.

A cold shiver went down Sam’s spine. It made sense. Horrifying as the second form of the xenomorph was, it wasn’t big enough to have laid eggs the size of the ones Sam had seen on the vidscreens. Which meant that something else was laying those eggs. Something bigger.

Alfie glanced back up at the screens. “Let’s hope you’re wrong about that.”

Sam looked up too, and then jumped up. “Dean,” he said, pointing. On the screen showing the camera feed from the medical bay, he could see the cot he’d laid the girls in. 

They weren’t there.

Dean grabbed for a pulse-rifle and followed Sam down the hall. Sam hurriedly punched in the code to open the glass door, then barreled in, stopping short as he caught sight of one little shoe sticking out from under the cot. Carefully, he got down on his knees and peered under it.

There they were, sleeping, their heads pressed together and their arms around each other. Sam let out his breath. “Guess they’re not used to beds anymore,” he murmured to Dean. 

Dean huffed out a quiet laugh. “Maybe you should stay in here with them,” he said. “Nothing else to do but wait, now.” 

“Stay with me,” Sam offered, but Dean shook his head. 

“Nah, I’ll go keep watch for a while. But here.” He unslung the pulse-rifle, laid it down on top of the cot. “Keep that with you. Just in case.” He reached out, brushed his thumb over the scarring around Sam’s eyepatch. “You need rest, Sammy.”

Sam reached up, put his hand over Dean’s. They stayed like that for a moment. Then Dean quietly stepped away. “I’ll keep an eye on you,” he promised, and left.

After a moment of debate, Sam left the rifle on the cot and crawled under it with the girls. He could have lain on the cot, he supposed, but he didn’t want to risk it sagging so much it squished them. Besides, he felt safer down there too, the glow of the heater to one side, and the warmth of the girls next to him. His eye drifted shut.

When he opened it later, he knew without knowing why that something was wrong. He was still under the cot, and the girls were still asleep, but the heater—

The heater wasn’t in the same place.

Carefully, Sam reached up to feel for the rifle Dean had left. But there was nothing on the cot above them except a rumpled sheet. The feeling of wrongness grew, and as quietly as he could, he shook the girls. “Newt, Krissy,” he hissed. “Wake up. Something’s wrong.”

“What?” Krissy asked, instantly awake.

Newt screamed. 

Sam grabbed them both and kicked up at the cot, knocking it down on its side and blocking them off from the rest of the room. A second later, something skittered over the edge, lit up in the orange glow from the heater. Beyond it, he could see something else moving, crawling up the wall across the room. Several long, spindly legs waved at them from the top of the cot, and a tail whipped across his face.

The facehuggers from the lab were here.

*****

The alarms went off, the sound nearly splitting Dean’s eardrums. He ran down the hallway to the command center to see what was going on. As he bolted through the throng crowded around the computer screen, the alarms went silent, though there were still red lights flashing around them to show that the danger had not yet passed. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

Charlie pointed at one of the screens. “They’re coming,” she said. “A and B guns firing on multiple targets.” The rounds echoed in the access tunnel, and the ammo count on the screen was spinning so fast that Dean couldn’t actually follow the numbers. 

“Look at those counters go. They’re wall to wall in there,” Gabriel said, actually sounding cheerful for once. He laughed, but his laughter had an almost desperate quality to it. “It’s a shooting gallery down there.”

“B gun is starting to overheat,” Charlie said. “Ammo is at ten percent.”

“So fast?” Dean asked.

Charlie shrugged. “The sentry guns can fire off a hundred rounds a second at max speed. With five thousand rounds total...” she trailed off, her focus still fixed on the screens. “A gun is at fifty percent.”

Dean stared at the terminal screen, his eyes burning. There were more bullets than xenomorphs, but the counter on the guns was getting lower and lower. B gun was already run dry, and A gun wasn’t far behind. When A gun finally burned through the rest of its ammo, everything went quiet for a moment, before an echoing pounding sound reverberated around them.

“A gun’s dry,” Charlie said. “And it sounds like they’re at the pressure door, now.” Henriksen came up behind them, then, and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. She swiveled in her seat to look up at him. “What’s going on?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Henriksen told her.

“That’s a shock,” Gabriel muttered.

Henriksen gestured to the windows, and they followed him over. In the distance was the dim silhouette of the generator’s south tower. Dean thought he could see the remains of the _Portunus_ there at the base of the complex. Suddenly a column of flame jetted up from the scarred collision site, illuminating the night with an eerie blue light.

“Shit,” Dean pronounced.

“Emergency venting,” Henriksen explained.

“How long until it blows?”

Henriksen’s frown deepened. “I’m projecting total systems failure in a little under four hours. The blast radius will be about thirty kilometers, about equal to ten megatons.”

“That’s a problem,” Charlie said.

And Gabriel was back at his bullshit, wailing, “I don’t fucking believe this, do you believe this? Fucking _shit_ , man.”

“Hudson, give it a break,” Meg snapped.

“It’s too late to shut the systems down?” Dean demanded.

“Afraid so,” Henriksen answered. “The crash did too much damage.”

Dean turned to Charlie. “We need the other drop shuttle. We need to fix the dish on the north tower and reestablish communications.”

“How?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know!” Dean bellowed, his nerves worn thin. “Someone needs to go out there! Take a portable terminal and plug it in manually!”

“Not it,” Gabriel proclaimed, like he was five years old and this was all a fucking game. “With those things running around? No way!”

“I’ll go,” Henriksen said.

“What?” Naomi asked, suddenly appearing behind Henriksen’s shoulder. “Go where?”

“To call down the _Quirinus_ ,” Henriksen told her. “I'm the only one qualified to realign the dish. Believe me, I'd prefer not to go. I may be synthetic, but I'm not an idiot. But it’s the only way to survive.”

“What do you need?” Charlie asked. “And where are you going to meet the ship?”

“How about right outside the station complex?” Henriksen asked. “I can call it down to the landing strip on the south tower, then fly it down to rendezvous with you there. Unlike the _Portunus,_ the _Quirinus_ is small enough to land there.”

Gabriel snorted. “And how do you suggest we get outside?”

“Listen,” Meg said then. It took Dean a minute to realize what she was talking about. The pounding sounds were gone, and all that was left was an eerie silence.

An instant later, the alarms were back on, shrieking at them. Charlie bolted back to her seat at the computer screens, raked her eyes across them, and then said, “Congratulations. They’re in the station.”

Dean ran his good hand through his hair. “Well, shit.” He shot a look at Henriksen. “We better get you moving.”

One of the holes burned into the deck outside of Operations yielded access to the sub-floor conduits. It wasn’t exactly ideal, but nothing on the fucking rock had been so far. Dean, Henriksen, and Alfie all had cutting torches to open up the conduit. It was kind of a surprise that Alfie knew how to use the cutting torches at all, but it was also satisfying to see the kid getting his hands dirty. Meg stood guard overhead, smart gun held at the ready.

As soon as they pulled the metal cover back, revealing the narrow interior of the conduit, Henriksen started loading his supplies inside. They didn’t know exactly what he would need on the crawl over to the north tower, so they gave him a little bit of everything — the portable terminal, some patch cables, and a bag full of tools. He pushed the gear down the conduit, then climbed in after, flattening himself to the metal floor.

“Ready,” he said. “This conduit runs almost to the uplink assembly. Three hundred eighty meters. Say, forty minutes to crawl down there. One hour to patch in and align the antenna. A few minutes to prep the ship, then about fifty minutes’ flight time.”

“That doesn’t leave us much of a cushion,” Dean told him. “Hurry.”

Henriksen flashed that smile again. “See you soon!” he called, almost cheerful. He disappeared into the dark of the conduit, and after a few minutes to make sure he was safely away, Dean and Alfie laid the metal cover back in place and welded it shut again.

Another alarm blared, making Dean jump. Alfie was pale as a sheet next to him, and Meg just gripped her smart gun tighter. Dean pulled out his mike and said into it, “Charlie, what’s going on now?”

“ _They’re in the approach corridor_ ,” she answered. “ _Haul your asses back up here._ ”

“On our way,” Dean answered.

They made their way back up to Operations and sealed the doors again. They could hear the remaining sentry guns going off, echoing around them. With that and the ear-splitting alarm blaring at them, Dean had no idea how Sam and the girls were going to get any rest. But he shook his head and went back to Charlie’s terminal, and stared at the screens.

“Twenty meters and closing,” Charlie said. “C and D guns at fifty percent.”

“Shit,” Dean muttered. They could hear the screeching of the xenomorphs in the corridor. Dean thought he could hear the hiss and sizzle of acid on metal, but it also might have been his imagination. “How many?” he asked. “Can you tell?”

Charlie shrugged. “No way to know for sure. I can only make out flashes when the corridor is illuminated by each round. A lot.” She inhaled sharply. “D gun is out.”

It suddenly went quiet around them.

“The hell?”

The shapes on the screen were gone, spilled back into darkness without the sentry guns firing. A moment later, the motion alarm shut off, and Operations was once again completely quiet.

“It worked,” Dean breathed, hardly believing it. “They retreated, the guns stopped them.”

“Not for much longer,” Charlie said, stabbing C gun’s display with a finger. “Ten rounds left. Next time they can just walk right up and knock.”

“They don’t know that,” Dean pointed out. “They’re probably looking for another way in. That will buy us some time.”

He threw himself down into a seat, tried to keep his breathing nice and even, but it wasn’t any good. Too much adrenaline, too many scares and too much damned bad news. He was exhausted but wired at the same time, the lull in activity leaving him shaking, mechanical hand twitching wildly.

“Hey,” Charlie said, her voice suddenly very concerned. “Are you okay?”

Dean shook his head. “We’re not doing this again, me and Sammy,” he told her. “We can’t. We barely survived last time, and there was just one of these fuckers.”

“If something happens,” Charlie told him, her voice low and hushed. “I’ll take care of it, you hear me? I’m not going to let any of us wind up like those colonists.”

Dean didn’t say anything to that, just nodded at her. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough. No suffering, no fucking xenomorphs tearing open their chests. Just a few quick shots, and then peace. He grabbed his mechanical hand with his good one, held onto it until it went still, and forced himself to slow his breathing down.

It would be all right.

He jumped up as a different alarm went off, scanned the screens for whatever new threat had reared its ugly head.

“It’s a fire alarm,” Charlie said. She looked up at him, eyes wide. “And it’s coming from the medical bay.”

Dean shot a look to the screen where the medical bay’s security footage should have been. It was dark. “Sammy!” he hollered, and ran.

Charlie was right behind him, yelling into her mike, “Hudson! Masters! We got a fire in Medical!”

“ _On our way, boss!_ ”

The double-paned glass separating Medical from Operations was fogged up, the emergency sprinklers raining down water inside the medical bay. Dean swiped a hand across the glass, clearing just enough that he could make out Sam. His brother was on the floor, writhing with all of his strength, eyepatch knocked askew. Wrapped around his throat was one of the fucking facehuggers, its spider legs scrabbling wildly at Sam’s face. Dean grabbed Meg’s smart gun out of her hands and aimed for the top of the glass, laid out a clean line of fire. The glass showered around them like jagged rain, and inside, both girls screamed. Dean leaped through the opening and ran for Sam, reaching out for the creature with his mechanical hand. He pried the tail away from Sam’s throat, the facehugger screeching and writhing.

Charlie was suddenly next to him, hands on the creature’s legs, pulling hard. Together, they managed to get it off of Sam, and he collapsed, gasping and gagging.

“The corner,” Charlie panted. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Dean gritted out.

They threw the facehugger across the room, and Dean snapped up the smart gun and blasted it into a shower of acid and smoke. 

“The girls,” Sam wheezed.

The girls were across the room, holding the last of the metal tables against the wall as water rained down over them. A second facehugger was there, pinned between the table and the wall, its tail whipping the air. The table shuddered and shook as they fought with it, their thin arms shaking as they tried to keep their grip on the wet surface. Before Dean could move, Gabriel shoved the girls out of the way and fired off another shot, point-blank. The acid hissed against the wall and table, but after a moment the hissing slowed and stopped.

Dean grabbed Sam and hauled him up into his arms, holding him tight against his chest. “Sammy,” he gasped. “Sammy Sammy Sammy...”

“I’m all right,” Sam told him. His voice was wrecked, but he was still fucking alive. “Dean, it’s okay.”

“No,” Dean said. He released his grip on Sam, but kept his good hand on Sam’s arm. “No, it isn’t.” He glanced around the room, taking stock. The grunts were all there, the girls and Sam and Dean himself, and outside the broken window, Alfie was standing, his face pale and eyes wide. And on the floor were two stasis tubes from the lab, open and undamaged. This had been no accident.

“We couldn’t open the doors,” Krissy was babbling across the room. “And we waved at the camera but no one came—”

“—and Sammy set off the fire alarm—” 

“—and then it attacked him!”

“Where’s Naomi?” Sam asked, but judging from his tone of voice, he already knew.

“She’s still in Operations,” Alfie answered.

“Alone?” Charlie demanded.

She and Meg and Gabriel bolted back through the busted window, leaving Alfie to gape after them. Dean helped Sam to his feet, and together they went over to the girls. They were soaking wet, hair flattened down by the water. Dean grabbed Krissy, pulled her up against him, and helped Sam pick up Newt. Together, they got the girls out through the shattered window and into the hall, just in time to see Charlie coming back, Meg and Gabriel behind her, frog marching Naomi between them.

“Fucking shit,” Gabriel snarled.

Naomi’s eyes lighted on Sam. “Sam,” she said, her tone entreating. “You have to understand. There’s so much we can learn from these creatures.”

“Shut. Up.” Sam sagged against the wall, turning away from her, and just rocked Newt against his chest, murmuring softly to her. Dean set Krissy down, and she joined Newt and Sam. Sam pulled her into a hug, too, clinging to them like he’d clung to Impala back on the _Bellerophon_. 

“But why, Ms. Burke?” Charlie asked, eyes searching Naomi’s face. “Why lock Sam and the girls in with those things?”

“I’ll tell you why,” Dean growled, his fingers itching to wipe that earnest expression off Naomi’s face. “She figured that she could get an alien back through quarantine if someone was,” he spat the word, “ _impregnated_ , or whatever you want to fucking call it, and then frozen for the trip home. Nobody would know about the embryos they were carrying, the girls or, or Sammy. No wonder she didn’t want us nuking the entire goddamn facility.”

“Wait a minute,” Charlie said, frowning. “But we'd all know.”

Sam spoke, his voice a monotone. “She could do it if she sabotaged certain freezers on the way home. Namely, all of yours. Then she could jettison the bodies and make up any story she liked to explain it.”

Meg stepped up close to Naomi, her smart gun inches from her nose. “That true, Burke?”

“Listen to them,” Naomi said, arching her brows. “Listen to what they're saying. It's paranoid delusion. It’s understandable, considering the treatment they’ve been undergoing, but—”

“Someone opened those stasis tubes,” Charlie pointed out. “Someone locked them in there. The rest of us were all in Operations.” She shook her head, droplets of water flying around her shoulders. “It’s true. It’s all true.”

“Never trust a suit,” Gabriel sneered. “Come on, Masters, let’s just waste her, right here, right now.”

Dean stepped right up to Naomi. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it? Everything you ever told us was a lie.”

She’d gone still, chin out, jaw tense. 

“I just don’t understand _why_ ,” he continued. “Why are you so willing to sacrifice us all, just to get some fucking _specimens_?”

“Not all of you,” she said. “Mr. Winchester was very clear on that point.”

The words knocked the air out of Dean’s lungs. _Mr. Winchester._ Dad. Fucking Naomi had been in contact with him from the beginning.

Naomi looked up at him. “I expected more from you, Dean. I thought you would be smarter than this. I thought you’d be more loyal to your father’s ideals.”

Dean turned away. “I’m happy to disappoint you.”

Suddenly, the hallway was thrown into darkness. The soft whir of the installation around them slowed and fell still.

Sam spoke up, voice still ragged. “They cut the power.”


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**  


A dim green glow filled the hallway as the emergency lighting kicked in. Shivering, Sam reached for the girls and pulled them in close, then wrapped his hand around Dean’s forearm. He could see, kind of, but he wasn’t about to lose track of his brother. Not now.

“What do you mean, _they_ cut the power?” Gabriel demanded, his voice higher than usual. “How could they cut the power? They're fuckin’ animals!”

“It doesn’t fucking matter!” Charlie snapped. “Meg, Gabriel, I want you two to get motion trackers and check the corridors. We might have some lights, but the computers are down, so the sentries won’t tell us jack. Take grenades with you. Move!”

Meg and Gabriel turned on their heels and hurried down the hall. After just a few meters, they were swallowed up by the shadows.

“Okay,” Charlie said, rubbing her forehead. “Let’s all get back to Operations, get on comms and see what we can figure out. Krissy, Newt, stick close to Sam and Dean, okay? Come on, everyone.”

“Alfie, watch Naomi,” Dean ordered.

Even in the dim light, Sam could make out the grim expression on the lieutenant’s face as he grabbed Naomi’s shoulders and immobilized her arms. “You got it,” he growled.

They paraded slowly down the hall to Operations as a group, Charlie in front, followed by Sam and Dean and the girls, with Alfie and Naomi bringing up the rear. Dean kept his hand on Sam’s arm, guiding him, but Sam still managed to smack his shin into one of the tables. In this light, his depth perception was nonexistent.

As soon as they arrived in Operations, Alfie forced Naomi into a chair and stood over her, his pulse-rifle trained on her chest. She stared stoically up at him, her eyes pools of shadow in the dim light.

“Sam, get on the comms to Hudson and Masters,” Charlie instructed. “I’ll contact Henriksen, see how that’s going. Maybe he’s made it to the north tower. Dean, cover the door, we’re going to have to close it manually when they get back. Lieutenant, you just keep that criminal where she is.”

“Roger,” Alfie said. If he had any resentment over a corporal basically taking over what should have been his job, he didn’t show it. It was quite a change from the lieutenant who wouldn’t eat at the same table as the lower ranks in the mess of the _Janus_.

Dean squeezed Sam’s arm in a silent promise, then picked up the flamethrower from the table and moved toward the door. 

Sam watched him go, heart hammering in his chest, then moved over to the table where the comm links were and sat down. Krissy and Newt followed him, shivering, and Sam wished they’d had time to find towels or a change of clothes or something. “Come here,” he whispered, and they crowded against him, wrapping their arms around his neck. Krissy’s wet hair draped over his shoulder, sending a shock of cold water trickling over his clavicle, but he didn’t tell them to move. At least he could keep them close.

He wiped his hands off on his pants as best he could, engaged the comm, and picked up the headset. “Anything?” he asked.

“ _There’s something_ ,” Meg replied. “ _I don’t see anything, though. I think they’re still sniffing around the pressure doors._ ”

“ _No, it’s closer than that_.” Gabriel’s voice, a note of panic creeping into it. “ _It's inside the complex!_ ”

“ _You're just reading me._ ”

“ _No. No, it ain't you. It’s inside the perimeter. It’s in here!_ ”

“Gabriel, stay cool,” Sam said, forcing himself to keep breathing. “Meg? What are you reading?”

There was a pause. Then she said, voice cool, “ _Hudson might be right._ ”

“ _Told you,_ ” Gabriel muttered. “ _The signal’s weird, though._ ”

“How so?”

“ _Must be some interference or something_ ,” Meg replied. “ _There's movement all over the place._ ”

Or they were coming, en masse. “Get back to Operations, now,” he ordered, fighting to keep his voice steady. But the panic was creeping over him. He remembered this, remembered tracking the xenomorph on the _Bellerophon_ , remembered seeing it take down the others one by one, without them ever seeing a thing. 

And there were dozens of them out there.

Sam tore the headphones off. “Dean, they’re coming!”

“Sammy?” Newt whispered. Sam pulled her and Krissy closer, leaned his cheek against the top of Newt’s wet head. He could hear Dean swearing, and even though he couldn’t actually see his brother, he could make out the flame burning on the end of his flamethrower, leaving red trails through the air as Dean moved.  

“We’ll be okay,” he whispered to the girls. He didn’t believe it. “We’ll be okay.”

“Henriksen’s made it to the tower!” Charlie reported, jumping up. She grabbed for the last pulse-rifle and hefted it, running toward the door. Sam couldn’t see her, couldn’t see Meg and Gabriel, but he heard it when they came in, their footsteps echoing as they ran, heard it when someone shoved the door closed with a dull thud. “Seal the door!” Charlie ordered. “Without power the locks don’t work. Hurry!”

A shower of sparks cut through the gloom, showing Sam a brief outline of Meg’s form, hurriedly welding the edges of the metal door shut. Gabriel was working next to her, babbling a steady stream of swears as he trained his own welder on the lower half. Dean stood nearby, the flamethrower trained on the door’s outline, and Charlie was peering down at something beeping loudly in her hand. A tracker. 

“Movement!” she panted. “Range twenty meters.”

“They found a way in,” Dean growled. “Something we missed.”

“We didn’t miss anything,” Alfie argued from the back of the room. 

“Yes we fucking did,” Dean snapped. He stepped back from the door, swinging the flamethrower up so that the flame licked up toward the ceiling. “Something in the ceilings, not on the plans, I don’t know what. But we missed it.”

“Sixteen... no, fifteen meters. Hurry, they’re almost here!” Charlie cried, a note of panic in her voice for the first time.

“We’re working as fast as we can!” Gabriel panted. Meg didn’t reply, just kept welding, ignoring the sparks landing on her skin and clothes.

“Twelve meters!”

“Sam,” Krissy croaked. “Sam, let's go.”

“The maze,” Newt added. “They didn’t find us in the maze.” She tugged at his sleeve. “Please, Sammy, let’s go!”

“We blocked off the maze,” Sam whispered.

“Ten meters,” Charlie announced. “Remember, short controlled bursts, we don’t want to get hit with that blood. Nine meters!”

“That's right outside the door!” Gabriel yelped. 

“Good thing we’re done then, huh?” Meg wheezed, snapping off the welding flame and stepping back from the door. The room was plunged back into near-darkness. Sam stiffened, searching frantically for any glimpse of Dean. After a moment, he found him, standing near the middle of the room, using the flamethrower to scan the ceiling.

“Eight meters,” Charlie said, a note of confusion in her voice. Sam squinted, trying to find her, and finally saw her backing across the floor toward Dean, still studying the now-wailing tracker in her hand. Meg and Gabriel were mere shadows next to her, all of them moving away from the door with their weapons trained on it. “Seven… six.”

“Can't be,” Gabriel protested. “That's inside the room!”

“What did I fucking tell you about third dimension readings?” Dean snarled. “They’re above us!”

A loud crash shook the room, nearly tearing the girls from Sam’s grip. Then the floor ripped open, tiles breaking apart and splitting, and a clawed hand shot up.

“Shit!” Gabriel shrieked, and the room filled with bursts of light as he, Meg, and Charlie all opened fire. A burst of flame from Dean’s flamethrower lit the first xenomorph to crawl through, and it staggered back, keening. But more were coming; the hole in the floor tore open further, disgorging two more, then another two. A shrieking hiss filled the room, and fires broke out as some of the shots went wild. Newt screamed, burying her face against Sam’s side, and Krissy grabbed for his hands, pulling hard. Smoke filled the room, obscuring his vision, but at least there was light now.

So that he saw it when one of them crept up behind his brother and reached for him.

“No!” Sam yelled, or tried. But his throat closed up, and his whole body went numb. He couldn’t move, couldn’t warn Dean, couldn’t do anything but watch as his worst nightmare played out before him. 

“Dean!” Krissy screamed, and a blast hit the alien behind his brother, sending it spinning across the room. Gasping, Sam turned to see Alfie, his young face determined over the barrel of his pulse-rifle. 

“Get to the medical bay!” he shouted. 

Sam forced himself to move, grabbing the girls’ hands, one in each of his. “Come on!” he shouted, and they ran for it, dodging fires and tables, heading straight for Dean and the hallway leading to the medical bay behind him. The medical bay was more isolated than Operations, with the ability to seal the ducts to keep airborne pathogens from spreading. It didn’t have the same computer power, or the space, that Operations did, but that hardly mattered now. 

He nearly crashed into Dean, who caught him by the shoulders. “The girls?” he demanded.

“Here!” they both chorused.

“Run!” Dean bellowed, and they all bolted toward the shadowy hallway, running full-out, shoving tables and chairs aside as they went. They got through the first doorway, the one that blocked off the hallway from Operations, but just as they reached the second at the other end, Sam saw Naomi standing in the doorway. She looked at them, a triumphant calm in her features, and then slid the door shut.

They stopped short, nearly crashing into it, and then someone smacked into Sam from behind, pushing him up against the metal. “Sorry!” Charlie panted. “Open the door, open the door!”

“Naomi!” Sam yelled, pounding on it. “Naomi, open the door!”

Dean grabbed for the edge and pulled hard, the muscles in his arms standing out. The door didn’t move. “Help!” Dean grunted, and Charlie shoved past Sam to grab for it too. 

“Get the other one closed!” Alfie roared, and Sam turned just in time to see Gabriel and Meg dart toward the still-open door behind them. Fire was licking at the edges of the frame, and just as they reached it, a long tail snaked through it and, quick as lightning, wrapped around Gabriel’s feet. He didn’t even have time to scream before he was yanked through the door and vanished into the smoke.

“Hudson!” Meg howled, but she didn’t pause. She grabbed the edge of the door and, crying out in pain, hauled it shut. “It’s not gonna hold!” she yelled, running back to them, her palms blistering. 

“Naomi!” Sam yelled again. “Naomi, please, open the door! If we all die, you’ll never get what you want, and neither will he!”

But it was too late. On the other side of the door, he heard Naomi scream. The sound cut off with a horrible crunching noise, and Sam backed away from the door. They were in there too.

They were everywhere.

“There!” Newt yelled, tugging hard on Sam’s hand. “There, you can get into the maze there!” She kicked at a square piece of metal welded over one of the openings to a maintenance shaft. “Come on, open it!”

Meg dropped to her knees, sliding across the floor as she wrestled her welder off her belt. “Back up!” she ordered as she fired the flame at the edge of the weld, then jammed an iron crowbar into the gap and wrenched it forward. A loud boom split the air as they watched her work, and Sam glanced over to see the door from Operations bulge inward. Another boom, and the door dimpled again, screeching as the metal bent. Smoke seeped in around the corners.

“Go, go, go!” Alfie panted.

“Got it!” Meg crowed, pulling the smoking piece of metal away and throwing it down the corridor. Krissy jumped forward, expertly unlatching the grate still covering the opening to the shaft, and tossed it to the side.

Dean grabbed for her shoulder, pulled her back. “I’ll go first,” he said, and ducked into the shaft, flamethrower first. It was a tight fit for him, and Sam bit his lip, hoping he’d be able to make it. But he wasn’t wearing the protective gear Dean was, and he’d lost so much weight since waking up on Gateway. He could do it. He hoped.

He felt a hand touch his, and looked down to see Newt curling her fingers around his. “You’ll fit, Sammy,” she whispered, and Sam squeezed her hand.

Charlie suddenly jumped, her eyes going wide. “Guys!” she cried, tapping her headset. “Henriksen’s got the ship coming! It’ll be here in about twenty minutes!”

“Can we take the shafts to the front entrance?” Alfie asked, voice urgent. He directed the question at Newt, who nodded without hesitation.

“Clear!” Dean yelled from inside the shaft, his voice echoing, and Charlie gestured at Sam and the girls to go next. Sam started to shake his head, thinking he should go last just in case, but both Newt and Krissy grabbed his hands and dragged him forward, and he got down and crawled in after them. His shoulders brushed both sides of the shaft, and he had to keep his head down, but he made it.

They caught up to Dean at a juncture where another shaft bisected the one they were in. “Which way?” Sam panted, twisting his head to the side to look both ways. The shaft stretched out in either direction, featureless and tight. He sent up a quick prayer that they didn’t narrow any more than this.

“This way,” Krissy said, crawling to the left, Newt right on her heels. “There’s a way down if we turn right at the next tunnel.”

“Henriksen’s got the shuttle coming,” Sam rasped to Dean as they started following the girls, inching along in their wake. Sam’s head brushed the top of the shaft, and he kept his gaze on Dean’s boots. “We’ve got to get down in front of the station in twenty minutes.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean swore. He raised his voice, shouted, “Turn left, then right!” His voice echoed down the shaft.

A moment later, Charlie’s voice came back, “Roger!” A second later, Sam felt her hand touch his calf. “Here! Meg and the lieutenant are right behind—”

Somewhere behind them, the sound of a smart gun blast roared, and then Meg was shouting, her voice laced with pain. “It got me!” Sam could make out. “Fucker’s dead, but the blood, it’s — fuck fuck _fuck_!”

“Meg,” Charlie whispered.

“I’ll go back for her!” Alfie’s voice, echoing weirdly around them. “Make sure the way is clear ahead!”

He heard Charlie choke back a sob, but she said, “Go!” and Sam kept crawling, his eyes on Dean’s boots, wishing he could see what was going on. He couldn’t see Newt or Krissy at all, and he could hear banging coming from behind them, echoing through the shaft and shaking the metal under his knees.

The shaft suddenly opened up in front of them as they reached another junction, and Sam gratefully lifted his head. He could see the girls now, just in front of Dean, looking back over their shoulders. When Newt caught sight of him, her small face relaxed. “This way,” she said, pointing past Krissy at a depression in the floor. “There’s another shaft down there.”

“We’re surrounded!” Alfie roared behind them. “Get out of here!” 

Meg’s wild laugh echoed around them. “Come on, fuckers, make my day!”

A concussive blast suddenly shook the entire shaft. “A grenade!” Charlie shouted, covering her head as the metal bent and screeched around them. Sam saw Dean fall, his chin slamming into the bucking floor. He saw Newt lunge for her stepsister, sobbing, saw Dean haul himself up and grab for her, catching Newt by the ankle.

And he saw Krissy teeter and fall, screaming, down the shaft.

*****

“Krissy!” Dean yelled after her. He could hear her, faintly, yelling back for them below. “I’m going after her!” He hauled Newt up by her leg, handed her over to Sam.

“I’ll activate Krissy’s locator,” Sam told him. “Hurry!”

Dean positioned himself at the edge of the hole, cradled one of their motion trackers against his chest with his good hand, and set his mechanical one against the sloping metal of the shaft. “Hurry up and figure out how to get us back out again,” he said. And, “Wish me luck.”

Then he edged himself off into the shaft, and dropped. The shaft turned and forked off into different side passages, but Dean was flying past too quickly to stop. He called out after Krissy again, hoping that he was getting closer. Her voice echoed up to him, but it was too distorted to help him with her direction. He came to a sudden, painful stop when the shaft made an L-shaped turn, suddenly flattening out.

Krissy wasn’t there, either. He crept forward, eyes straining in the dark. The motion tracker was silent. “Shit,” he muttered. She must have slid down one of the side shafts, he figured. “Krissy!” he yelled again.

“Dean!”

Dean spun around in the shaft as best he could, as the motion tracker in his hand started beeping insistently. It wasn’t Krissy who was registering, though. It was Sam. He hit the L turn hard and fast, grunting as he connected. Dean crawled to him, but Sam pushed him back. 

“Charlie and Newt,” he said by way of explanation, and they both crawled out of the way. The motion tracker started beeping again, and when Dean glanced at it he could see a cluster of blue dots, two in middle of the screen, two others coming in close from the side. Him and Sam, and Charlie and Newt sliding down toward them, he realized. But in the distance, there were more, red dots closing in fast.

“They’re coming,” Dean said. “We better make this fast.”

“Krissy’s locator isn’t getting a signal,” Sam choked out. “Dean, I can’t get a reading on her.”

Charlie landed next to Sam then, Newt clutched in her arms. Of course, she was smaller than Sam, so it would’ve been easier for her to keep a grip on Newt on the way down. “They’re right behind us,” she panted.

Dean stowed the tracker and started crawling again. After another couple meters, the shaft split into a Y. One side went straight ahead for as far as Dean could see in the dim light, and the other dipped down. He turned to Newt and asked, “Which way?”

She pointed straight ahead. “That one leads back to the main hall,” she said. “The other one just goes down.”

Krissy still wasn’t on the motion tracker. “Down,” Dean repeated. “Down where?”

“ _Dean! Sam!_ ”

Krissy’s voice suddenly echoed up to them, closer than before. Dean launched himself down the shaft, hoping for a soft landing at the bottom this time. He landed on a grate covering an open area, a hallway of some kind, he thought. Unlike everything else, it was lit up with all kinds of lights. He wondered for a moment if the power hadn’t gone out down there, before he realized that he was essentially standing almost on top of the backup generator.

“Dean!”

“Krissy!” he yelled back. She was still below him, he realized. Under the grate was a mass of pipes and cables, disappearing into a murky black body of water. The place had flooded at some point, water from the cooling conduits spilling out everywhere, though it was hard to tell exactly how deep it was.

Standing in the middle of it, up to her chest in water, was Krissy.

Sam and Charlie climbed down from the shaft, more carefully than Dean had. After a moment, Newt slid down after them as well. The beacon on Sam’s chest was lit up now, Dean saw, and letting out a series of frantic beeps. “It found her,” Sam said unnecessarily, tapping the beacon.

Dean pointed below to where Krissy was. “We’ve got to get down there.”

“Krissy!” Newt cried.

“Josie!” Krissy wailed. “Josie, it’s all wet down here!”

Charlie fished out some of her tools. “I can cut through the grating,” she said. “One of us can climb down and get her, then.”

“Do it,” Dean told her. He turned away as she started to slice through the metal with her cutting torch, crouched low on the grate and called down to Krissy, “We’re coming! Stay there!”

“Okay,” she called back. She sounded nervous, but Dean couldn’t blame her for that. His heart was still pounding in his chest, pulse roaring in his ears, and the damned beeping coming from the motion tracker and the locator wasn’t doing him any good, either.

Sam pulled the motion tracker from him, stared down at it for a minute before announcing, “They’re here.”

“Charlie,” Dean snapped, “hurry!”

Krissy shrieked below them, and then Newt was screaming her name. Charlie made it through the grate, kicked the section she’d cut through loose, and together she and Dean swung down into the black water. There was a dark shape in the distance, but then it was gone. All at once, the beeping from the motion tracker stopped. 

“Krissy,” Newt sobbed above them. “Krissy!”

She’d been taken.

Charlie laid a hand on Dean’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “They have her. She’s gone.”

“No,” Dean said, shaking her off. “No. She’s still alive. They keep them alive to be incubators. All we have to do is find her and get her before that happens. She’ll be fine, you hear me?”

“Dean...”

“No!” Dean yelled. “We’re not leaving her!”

He scrambled up the pipes and cables, back to Sam and Newt on the grate above them. Newt was collapsed on Sam’s chest, sobbing, and Sam had a hollow look on his face. “Dean,” Sam said, and in that one word Dean heard everything he himself was feeling.

“We’ll get her,” Dean promised them both. He reached for Newt, pulled her up into his arms. “Come on, Newt. We have to get you to the shuttle.” Newt was crying too hard to say anything, but she shook her head, hard. “Newt,” Dean said, brushing her wild curls back from her face. “Me and Sammy, we need you to be safe. The shuttle is safe. We’re not leaving Krissy behind. We’ll get her. I promise. But we need to get you safe first.”

She stared at him, dark eyes rimmed with red, cheeks streaked with tears, and nodded.

The motion tracker started beeping again. Charlie, who had climbed halfway up through the hole in the grating, pulled out her pulse-rifle and scanned around them. “We better get going.”

“Right,” Dean said. “Newt, hold on.”

They bolted for the nearest wall, followed the maze of cables and pipes and conduits until they all came together into one massive power terminal. Dean wasn’t familiar with the design of this station, but he’d been on enough ships to know that power generators generally had a point of direct access.

“An elevator,” Charlie breathed out, pointing. “Come on, those things are getting closer.”

The beeping was getting faster as they hurried into the elevator. Charlie jabbed the up button multiple times, as at the same time the beeping of the motion tracker merged into a single note. There was a hiss, and the elevator doors started to slide shut, and then there was a xenomorph claw reaching through the gap. The doors hit the creature’s arm, and then sprang back open.

Dean jammed his finger on the close door button desperately. “Shit shit shit!”

Charlie shoved the muzzle of her pulse-rifle in the gap above the xenomorph’s claw and fired. There was a spray of acid, and she reeled back, ripping her body armor off. Dean watched the skin on her arm and shoulder blister up and break open. But it worked, and the doors finally slid closed, and then they were moving up through the complex.

“You okay?” Sam asked Charlie.

She grimaced. “I’ll be fine once we get to the _Quirinus_ and get the acid neutralized.” 

But by the time the elevator doors opened on the main corridor, Charlie was as white as a sheet, her breathing coming in short pained bursts, and Sam had to help her out.

“Almost there,” Dean promised. Newt trembled in his arms, and he held her tight. It was a straight shot out of the complex, no frills. Dean could only hope that Henriksen had done his job and gotten the other drop ship outside and ready for them.

The winds were howling outside, and something like rain was starting to fall around them. Still a stormy shitball, even with the addition of breathable air. But the _Quirinus_ was there, lights standing out like a beacon, illuminating the murky twilight. The drop hatch opened, the airsteps descended, and Henriksen ran down them to help Sam with Charlie. 

“How much time?” Dean yelled. The wind ripped his words away, but Henriksen turned in his direction.

“Plenty!” he yelled back. “Twenty-six minutes!”

“We need to make a detour! Hurry!”

They got everyone loaded on board, strapped themselves in, and then Dean ordered Henriksen to fly the craft over to the south tower on the generator. When Henriksen balked, citing time pressures and wind speeds and other bullshit, Charlie whispered, “Do it, Henriksen.”

“The entire area is destabilized,” Henriksen said, doubtful. “I’m not going to be able to keep the _Quirinus_ on the landing platform for very long.”

“That’s fine,” Dean said. “I don’t intend to be gone long.” He took his flamethrower and taped the pulse-rifle to one side, figuring that this way, he could fire them both with one hand and use the other to carry Krissy out of there. When he was finished, he looked up to see Sam staring at him, a bandolier with the last six grenades attached to it in his hands. “No,” Dean told his brother. "You stay here."

“Like hell!” Sam exploded. “You’re not going in there by yourself!”

“I need you safe, Sammy!”

Sam’s mouth pinched into a hard line. He grabbed a pulse-rifle, tested the sights with his eye, and then pronounced, “And I’m going to keep _you_ safe.”

The shuttle shuddered around them, nearly knocking Dean off his feet. Henriksen turned in the pilot’s seat, his smile set and grim. “We’re here.”

*****

The entire tower was swaying. Sam gripped the pulse-rifle tight and followed Dean down the airsteps. As soon as they set foot on the roof, another rumble shook the structure, and blue light knifed through the air around them. Up here, the winds were gale-force, howling past them, threatening to force them off their feet. Sam shifted his grip on the rifle and grabbed for the bandolier he’d slung across his chest. His heart was racing, his breaths coming short and fast, his head pounding. This was the stupidest thing they’d ever done.

But Krissy was still alive, and Newt was waiting for her, and Sam wasn’t about to let Dean go in there alone.

“ _You’ve got about fifteen minutes, tops_ ,” Henriksen said over their comms. “ _I’ll try to keep the shuttle steady._ ”

“ _We’ll be back,_ ” Dean said firmly, his voice coming through over the comm. 

“ _You’d better_ ,” Charlie croaked.

Dean held out his good hand, and Sam gripped it in his. Together, they made their way across the landing strip to the freight elevator, leaning into the winds, keeping each other steady. One step at a time, Sam thought.

They could do this.

There was only one button to press, and Sam angled the pulse-rifle down until he could jab the tip against it. The button lit, and the safety cage covering the platform retracted with a whine Sam could hear even over the wind. The inner doors slid open next, and they moved through the open doors and onto the platform. The inner doors slid closed, followed by the cage ones, which slammed shut with a clang that reverberated around them.

Dean pressed another button, and the elevator lurched, then slowly began the descent. Sam kept his eyes on the floor counter, watching it tick down. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen. He shifted his grip on the rifle, checked his pockets for the flares and for the lighter he’d stashed there. Sweat was trickling down his face, wetting down his hair and dripping salt into his mouth. Krissy’s locator beacon, now fixed on the barrel of his rifle, lit up and let out a soft beep. He’d been right; placed there, he could see the beacon’s screen and keep his gun in firing position. No getting caught by surprise because they’d had to check the screen.

Fourteen. Thirteen.

A voice echoed around them, flat and robotic. “ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have fifteen minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

“Just like the _Bellerophon_ ,” Dean murmured, and Sam squeezed his hand hard.

Eleven. Ten. They stood side by side, watching bars of light flash past as the car creaked its way down the shaft. Dull thuds and whines peppered the air as one system after another shut down. Or maybe that was xenomorphs, attracted to the moving elevator. Sam didn’t know, and he didn’t care, as long as the elevator kept descending. 

Eight. Seven. Six.

The beacon was getting louder, and Dean gripped Sam’s hand even harder. “She’s down here,” he rasped, and Sam nodded, tears threatening to spill over from his remaining eye. They’d known she must be; it made sense given what they’d seen, but now they knew for sure. Krissy was down here. They would find her, and they would save her, and they’d bring her back to Newt, and all four of them would leave this rock together.

Three. Two. One. The elevator kept going, past the ground level, heading for the sub-levels. Three more floors to go, Sam thought, watching them tick past. Sub-level A. Sub-level B.

Sub-level C.

Both sets of doors parted just as the voice announced, “ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have fourteen minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

They weren’t in the same part, but it looked the way Sam remembered from the vid feeds a few hours and a million years earlier. The same chambered structure arching overhead, the same strange resin-like webbing forming ribs and hollows, the same bits and pieces of the colony and the colonists woven into it. It stretched out like a maze in front of them, full of twists and turns that followed no logic they could understand. They took a few steps forward, weapons at the ready, but the motion tracker on Dean’s belt stayed, surprisingly, silent. Sam could feel the oppressive heat the others had mentioned, laying over him like a heavy wet blanket. The track lighting had gone out down here too, replaced by the murky greenish glow of emergency lights, occasionally punctuated by flashes of blue. Sam hadn’t expected to be able to see much, but he hadn’t thought it would be this bad.

Reluctantly, he let go of Dean’s hand and pulled one of the flares free. Dean took it from him, held it while Sam lit it, and they dropped it a few meters in front of the elevator. It burned with a bright red light, easily visible through the haze. It would burn for about twenty minutes, and he had six more of them in his pocket. If they placed them right, they could light themselves a trail straight back to the elevator.

Dean jerked his chin at the locator beacon, and Sam glanced down at it. It was flashing over to the left, and so he turned that way, picking his way past a row of opened eggs lined up in front of a wall of half-rotted skeletons, their skulls drooping. The beep increased in frequency with every step, and Sam had to fight the urge to just start running. They didn’t have time to waste on backtracking because of a stupid mistake.

“Flare,” Dean said, turning around. They lit a second, dropping it where they could still see the light from the first, and moved on. The locater beacon had them turn left, then right, then left again, and all the while, not a single xenomorph appeared. Sam wanted to scream with the tension of waiting, of wondering why they weren’t attacking, of wondering if they were forming some kind of plan. Overhead, he could see some of the heat exchanges glowing a dull, threatening red. 

“ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have eleven minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

Three flares and several turns later, the beacon lit up bright blue and started emitting a steady whine. Sam stopped, staring down at it, then glanced at the motion tracker on Dean’s belt. Nothing. 

“She’s here,” he said, dumbly.

Dean raised his jury-rigged flamethrower/rifle and blasted a gout of fire into the air. “Krissy!” he hissed, turning on the spot, looking in all directions. The fire lit up several chambers containing bodies, all plastered in a row with peeled-back eggs in front of them, and Sam jerked back when he saw that one of them had a facehugger still wrapped tight around its head. 

“Dean,” he rasped, jerking his rifle at it.

Dean inched closer, holding the flamethrower out so that the fire licking the tip lit up the pulsing skin of the xenomorph and what they could see of the body underneath. It wasn’t Krissy, Sam saw immediately. Whoever this person was, she was clearly an adult woman. An adult woman with a familiar sweep of hair flopping down over the ridge of the creature’s back.

Naomi.

“Poor bastard,” Dean whispered. 

Sam stared at her, hanging there, her collarbones standing out against her pale, sweaty skin, her hands pinioned by the webbing, her perfect hair mussed and lank. Then he lifted his rifle and shot her through the heart. Not even Naomi deserved what would happen if they just left her there. “She brought it on herself,” he said, turning away.

He heard the crackle of fire behind him and an inhuman screech, and knew that Dean was destroying both the facehugger and the thing growing in Naomi’s body. The webbing flared up, burning hotly, and they heard a scream. 

A little girl.

“It’s coming!” Krissy’s voice, panicked and sobbing and very, very close. “Sam! Dean! Please!”

“Krissy!” they said together, and Dean shot fire down the middle of the hall, lighting up the chambers ahead. Sam saw her then, just a couple meters away, her little body trapped between a withered skeleton and the rotting body of a teenage boy. In front of her, a giant egg was rocking slightly, the top of it slowly splitting into four points.

“Dean!” Sam shouted, and Dean lunged forward, fire already blasting out from the flamethrower. It caught the facehugger mid-leap, roasting it before it reached Krissy, who was sobbing with terror. 

With a sudden hissing roar, a full-sized xenomorph leapt out of the mist, both sets of teeth bared. Sam shouted and jerked his rifle up, firing a pulse at it before it could reach Dean. The shot caught the thing in its midsection, blasting it back down the hall and into an exposed heating conduit, which was glowing bright red. The xenomorph’s shrieks echoed around them as it writhed and twitched against the pipe, sizzling.

Two more appeared, swinging down from above. “Sam!” Dean shouted, firing pulse after pulse at them. They screamed as the shots hit home, splattering thick yellow acid onto the walls, which began to run, hissing and melting. Dean sent a final pulse after them, then switched weapons and began lighting the walls on fire, creating a barrier of flame between the end of the hall and them.

It was now or never. Sam darted around the remains of the egg and over to Krissy. “I knew you’d come,” she cried, twisting her head back and forth as she tried to free herself. Sam grabbed for the webbing covering her. It hadn’t hardened yet, and he pulled handfuls of it away as fast as he could. The stuff stuck to his hands, gumming them up, but he kept working until he could pull Krissy free of the mess. “Hang onto me,” he ordered, shifting her around onto his back, and she wrapped her sticky arms and legs tight around his neck and waist. He stepped away from the wall and turned, searching frantically through the flame and smoke for his brother. 

He couldn’t see him.

“ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have nine minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

“Dean!” he shouted, his heart wrenching in his chest. Not now. He couldn’t get Krissy back only to lose Dean. Sam couldn’t do this without him. “Dean, I’ve got her!” 

“Over there!” Krissy shouted, and Sam squinted into the smoke, his eye stinging. And then Dean was there, sweat dripping down his face, a fierce grin on his lips. Sam nearly sobbed with relief. Later, he promised himself, and grabbed for Dean’s hand. 

“Book it!” Dean yelled, and they turned and ran, Dean in the lead, Sam stumbling after him. He could hear more of them coming, their claws scrabbling over the encrusted resin, their hissing bouncing off the walls around them. Dean’s hand was hot in his, slick with sweat, and Sam almost lost his grip on it when they took the first turn, but the resin left on his palms kept their hands glued together. Sam tried to watch for the flares, but they were moving too fast, and his sight was too bad. He just had to trust that Dean knew what he was doing.

“ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have seven minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

Dean stopped.

Sam tripped and nearly fell, but caught himself on Dean’s shoulder just in time. Krissy let out a sob and buried her face into his neck. “Dean?” Sam panted. “Dean, what—”

The steam seemed to part, and before them, Sam saw a field of eggs, what looked like hundreds of them. Unlike the others he’d seen, these were all still ovoid in shape, unopened. Freshly laid. 

Then Sam turned his head, and saw what had been in his blind spot.

A tube-like membrane was pulsing not two meters away from them, the tip of it hovering over the floor. As Sam watched, the membrane contracted, and a glistening egg was squeezed out onto the floor. The membrane retracted, dripping gelatinous ooze, and Sam lifted his gaze, following it up, and up, and up.

The membrane swelled larger and larger until it was a great pulsing tubular sac, suspended from the network of pipes and conduits overhead by the web-like resin. It looked like a vast coil of intestine, draped over and among the machinery, full of eggs.

And it was attached to what was, unmistakably, the queen.

Sam had thought the second form of the xenomorphs was large. They were over two meters long, with tails that extended that length out. The queen was several times that size; her jaws and head alone were bigger than he was. She stood there, towering above them, her head pointed directly at them, her outer jaws pulled back in a silent hiss. The inner set shot forward and opened, the teeth dripping slime.

Xenomorphs — drones, Sam thought, servants of the queen — appeared on the edges of the field of eggs. They snarled at them, their tails cutting through the mists, their claws extended. Next to him, Dean jumped, and fired off a burst of flame into the air. Then he trained the flamethrower on the closest egg. 

The queen screamed, writhing on her throne, and let out of series of clicks. To Sam’s surprise, the drones all backed away, and silence fell. Dean’s grip on his hand was vise-like now, painful, but Sam clung back just as hard. Krissy’s arms were so tight around his neck that he was on the verge of choking, but she too was utterly silent.

“Sammy,” Dean said, voice low. 

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Then Dean squeezed his hand, once, and let loose a gout of flame that lit up the three closest eggs. The queen screamed with rage, and Dean cranked it up, sending fire shooting out over six meters as he methodically panned the stream over the rows of eggs until, finally, the fuel ran out and the flamethrower sputtered to a stop. But it was enough. The eggs all caught, crackling in the sudden heat, and Dean shouted, “Now, Sam!”

Sam grabbed for one of the grenades on the bandolier and pulled the pin with his teeth. He threw it as hard as he could into the middle of the conflagration. All at once, there was an explosion of xenomorphs screaming, the crackle and roar of fire, and a sizzling sound as the eggs burst open and cooked. Sam fired several rounds off at the enormous queen, splitting the egg sac open in a shower of slime and mucus. He was surprised that it didn’t burn like acid as it rained down.

Krissy was screaming in his ear, and Dean was firing his rifle too, sending pulses into the drones trying to fight their way through the flames to them. And somehow, above it all, Sam heard the drone of the automated system say, “ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have four minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

“Let’s go!” Krissy shouted, and Dean fired one last time and then grabbed for Sam’s hand. 

“This way,” he panted, tugging Sam around and starting for an open space to the right.

“Behind us!” Krissy shrieked.

They spun as one. A wall of drones was rushing toward them, crawling along the walls, scooting along the edges of the fire. Sam tore his hand from Dean’s, shoved his pulse-rifle into his brother’s hands, and fumbled for the bandolier. It came off in his hands, five grenades still dangling from it. Quickly, he pulled the pins from all five, then threw the entire thing into the flames. Either this would work, or they were about to die, four minutes early.

“Come on!” Dean yelled, and they ran for it.


	5. Part Five / Epilogue

**Part Five**   


The concussive blast from the grenades knocked them over a few seconds later, but Dean grabbed Sam by his arm and hauled him up. Krissy was still clinging to Sam’s neck, but she hadn’t taken any damage from the explosion. She flashed him a shaky salute, quickly readjusting her grip as Sam steadied himself. Dean yanked on Sam’s arm, nearly dragging him back through the twisted architecture. The maze of tunnels blurred by, sirens howled, and the station rocked with explosions, nearly knocking Dean off his feet again. Sam stumbled, and Dean pulled him close to his body, matched the rhythm of their running together.

He could hear tearing sounds behind them, meat and cartilage and chitinous material shredding. Then the queen screamed, blotting out any other sounds around them.

The flares were dim in the humid air, the moisture nearly choking them out. But there was just enough light reflected by the shitty mist for Dean to follow their path back to the elevator. A mass of debris had fallen down the shaft from a higher level, partially blocking the elevator doors. Dean stabbed the button, and the motors whined and screeched. He didn’t want to think about what was coming behind them, but the elevator doors weren’t opening, and all he could hear in the distance was the thumping of something moving toward them very fast.

Dean stabbed the elevator button again and, when that didn’t yield any results, attempted to pry the doors open. “Sam,” he grunted.

Wordlessly, Sam took his place opposite Dean, and together they managed to get the doors open. The mechanism was probably jammed, and with the south tower getting ready to blow itself sky high, Dean wasn’t terribly surprised. They climbed into the elevator, Dean hitting the close door button just as a huge shape came barreling out of the mist at them.

The doors didn’t close all the way, leaving a gap just large enough for the alien queen to fumble her giant talons uselessly at them. She was too close to shoot, so Dean kicked at her instead. She hissed and spit, but her hand retracted, and the doors finally shut. The elevator shuddered and whined, and started its slow crawl up to the landing platform. Dean slumped against the floor, panting.

And then the metal floor buckled up under him. Dean shot to his feet again, pulse-rifle aimed at the bulge. There was a thumping sound, louder than before, and then the metal flooring jutted up, stretching and screeching under them. Dean flattened himself against the elevator wall, and Sam inched back toward the door.

“ _Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have two minutes to reach minimum safe distance._ ”

The elevator started to rock back and forth, shaking Dean and making him lose his footing. The floor was starting to give way, the metal splitting and peeling open under the assault. A giant black claw reached through the slash in the floor, but the elevator doors were opening again. Dean gestured for Sam and Krissy to go first, Dean himself following only when he was sure that they were clear. He stepped back from the elevator, aimed the pulse-rifle at the floor, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. The magazine was dry.

Dean threw it away from him, turned and bolted for the landing strip. The _Quirinus_ wasn’t there, and Sammy just stood there in the gale-force winds, hair whipping around him, cradling Krissy tight in his arms.

“No,” Dean breathed. “Henriksen!”

He turned back to look at the elevator, watched the queen erupt from it, nine kinds of pissed off. She pulled herself free, ripping the metal doors away, talons leaving deep gouges in the landing strip. She moved slowly toward them, like she sensed she had them trapped.

Suddenly there was a roar behind them. Dean spun around, half-expecting to see hundreds of xenomorphs scaling the side of the tower. Instead he was nearly blinded by the beacon lights on the underbelly of the _Quirinus_. It hovered above the landing strip, the hatch open, airsteps descended low enough for them to grab. 

“Go!” Dean shouted at Sam, who scrambled up the airsteps, pushing Krissy up the stairs ahead of him. Dean kept an eye on the fucking queen, who twisted her head around, like she was trying to figure out what was going on. Her inner set of jaws snapped in Dean’s direction, sending spittle flying. But then Sam was up the steps, and Dean turned and climbed up after him, screaming, “Henriksen, go! Now!”

The platform dropped away under him, and the hatch swung shut. Dean sprawled out on his back on the floor, gasping and shaking. This time it was Sam who hauled him up, who took him by the hand and led him to a seat, strapped him in for the trip back to the _Janus_. Sam buckled himself in next to Dean, reached out for his hand and squeezed it tight. 

“I love you, too,” he said, quietly. 

They stayed that way for the entire flight back. Dean could see through one of the portholes the fireball that used to be Acheron boil up behind them, obliterating any traces of the colony and, with any luck, every last one of the damn xenomorphs there. The shockwave hit the _Quirinus_ , rumbling like thunder and shaking the drop shuttle. He could feel it when they hit the edge of the atmosphere. Henriksen had the artificial gravity turned on, but there was still a moment where it felt like they’d broken loose from something. 

Light reflected off of the planetoid’s parent, an enormous gas giant that glinted a calm blue. Dean yearned for Earth, suddenly, to see real sky and dig his toes into the cool sand on a beach somewhere. He wanted to take Sammy there, to recover in peace, and watch the girls play in sparkling blue waves.

Sam squeezed his hand again, and it felt like a promise.

“We did it,” he whispered.

They landed in the shuttle bay of the _Janus_ , unstrapped themselves from the transport seats and moved forward to get Charlie and the girls. Charlie’s eyes were closed, her face lined with pain, but her breathing was slow and even in a reassuring fashion. An anesthetic, Dean figured, to keep her comfortable during transport. He bypassed her and went straight for the girls, scooped up the nearest one to him, Newt, and hugged her tight.

“You came back,” Newt said, hugging back hard. “And you brought Krissy, too.”

“I promised you, didn’t I?”

Sam came up next to him, laid his hand on Newt’s shoulder. “Come on, ace, let’s get you both some real food.” He held out a hand to Krissy, too. “Both of you need more than a few emergency rations. I’ll take you down to the mess, okay?”

They nodded, and Dean set Newt down so she could follow after Sam.

The front of the _Quirinus_ was empty, but Dean ran into Henriksen just outside the drop hatch, pulling a stretcher behind him.

“Hey,” Dean said.

Henriksen just smiled. “I gave her a shot, for the pain, and put some salve on the burns,” he explained. “I’ll get her on the stretcher and take her down to medical. I don’t think the acid burns were extensive — at least, not as extensive as yours and your brother’s were.” He hesitated, then continued, “I’m sorry if I gave you a scare. The platform was just too unstable. I had to circle and hope things wouldn’t get too rough.”

“Henriksen,” Dean said. “You did a bang-up job, man. Thank you.”

“Not bad for an android, don’t you think—”

He cut off suddenly, milky-white android blood spilling from his open mouth. His shirt stretched out from his stomach, like something had run him through. It pierced him slowly, tearing his shirt, revealing the sharp black spear of a xenomorph tail.

*****

Henriksen coughed. 

The sound was so unexpected that Sam stopped short, eliciting a surprised squawk from Krissy and an ‘oof’ from Newt. “Henriksen?” he called, turning around.

Just in time to see Henriksen’s whole body suddenly rip in half. 

Dean, who had been standing right in front of the android, staggered back as a spray of milky-white synthetic fluid hit him in the face. “What the—” he sputtered, swiping furiously at his face. 

“Sammy?” Newt whispered, tugging hard on his sleeve. “Sammy, _look_.”

But he’d already seen it. The queen was there, half of her massive bulk coiled on top of the _Quirinus_ , the rotating lights on the shuttle bay’s ceiling reflecting across the shiny carapace of her body. Half of Henriksen was in each of her clawed hands, his arms and legs kicking feebly, coils of synthetic intestine spilling out from each part. Slowly, deliberately, she flung both pieces of Henriksen’s body aside and hissed, her jaws dripping with slime. Her hands smacked down onto the floor, and she began to descend, her four legs unfolding in inhuman geometries as she heaved herself down. 

Right in front of Dean.

Without taking his eyes off the queen, Sam reached out with both hands and pushed the girls behind him. “On my signal, find a place to hide, where she can’t get you,” he murmured. “Find somewhere small, under the floor if you can.”

“But what about you?” Krissy, almost hysterically.

“ _Go!_ ” Sam shouted, and he heard them both take off, their small feet clanging over the grating covering the maintenance shafts under the floor. 

The queen’s head jerked up at the sudden motion, swinging around until she was looking directly at the girls, or so Sam assumed; he couldn’t actually see any eyes. A ripple seemed to run through the queen’s body, and she raked her claws through the air and roared, jumping forward a good four meters in one movement. Behind her, he saw a huge whip-like tail lash, the pointed end scraping against the ceiling and sending down a shower of sparks. 

Sam ran forward a few steps, waving his arms. “Hey, ugly!” he yelled. “Over here!”

“Sam!” Dean screamed from somewhere behind her. “Sam, no! Hey, bitch, I’m over here!”

Slavering with fury, the queen spun toward the sound of his voice, and Sam dropped to the ground a split second before her tail would have smashed into him. It slashed the air mere inches above his head, and he flattened himself against the grating, struggling for air. He had no idea what they could do to fight her here, with no weapons. This wasn’t like the _Bellerophon_ ’s escape shuttle; there wasn’t a wall of guns just a few meters away. There was the _Quirinus_ , the drop hatch, a lot of empty space, and not much else.

Something touched his cheek, and he started, nearly crying out, until he saw a small hand waving at him from under the grating. “Hide!” Newt whispered, peering up at him, her little face bisected by metal squares.

“Krissy?” he panted.

“Here,” she answered, her pale face appearing next to Newt’s. “Sam, hide!”

“I have to get Dean,” he told them. “Stay under there, no matter what, you hear me?”

They nodded, tears streaming down their cheeks, and he pushed himself back to his feet and looked frantically for Dean. He found the queen first, her bulk easy to spot even in the vast emptiness of the shuttle bay. She was hissing, repeatedly stabbing her tail at the ground like a scorpion, the point scraping across the grating with a metallic screech.

And then he spotted Dean, running full-tilt toward the cargo lock door. With a roar, the queen was after him, moving like lightning, far faster than anything that size had a right to move. Time seemed to slow, and Sam felt like he’d been encased in cement. She was going to get him. She was going to get his brother, and Sam was too far away to do anything to stop it. 

“No,” he choked.

A split second before her claws would have grabbed him, Dean dove through the cargo lock and the doors whirred to life, closing halfway before the queen slammed into them. Screeching with fury, the queen backed up and lunged forward again. But the doors snapped shut, and she rammed into them head-first. 

Dean was safe.

Sam nearly collapsed onto the grating as relief flooded him. But it wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot, and he started backing away as quietly as possible, mind whirling as he tried to figure out where he could hide until Dean came back. Because Dean was going to come back, he knew that without question. Dean was planning something, and Sam just had to keep them all safe long enough for him to get back.

The shuttle, he thought. Charlie was still in there, and if he could get inside and close the ramp, that just might be enough to keep them both safe. 

But he couldn’t leave the girls out here alone.

A hand grabbed his ankle, and Sam choked back a scream, looking down to see the upper half of Henriksen lying at his feet. “I’ll distract her,” the android hissed, milky fluid spilling over his lips. “Get yourself hidden, you hear me?”

The queen bellowed, clawing at the cargo lock doors, at the walls, at the floor. Her tail snapped forward, skewering into the door, but though the metal shrieked and bent, it held. Henriksen let go of Sam’s ankle and hooked his fingers into the grating, pulling himself a few inches toward her, the tubing emerging from his torn waist flopping wetly after him. “Go!” he threw over his shoulder, and Sam kept backing away, angling toward the shuttle, which was parked near the drop hatch. Sam nearly backed into the latter and almost fell the ten meters to the bottom. Panting, he grabbed for the hatch controls to steady himself, then lurched toward the shuttle’s open ramp. He nearly fell again, this time over the stretcher Henriksen had brought for Charlie, which still stood abandoned in front of the ramp, soaked in synthetic blood.

“Hey, you there! Alien queen!” Henriksen yelled then, or tried. His words burbled out slowly, the volume decreasing with every syllable, but it was enough to catch the queen’s attention. She turned from her systematic destruction of the cargo lock doors and skittered forward, hissing.

Sam shouldn’t have been able to hear it. The queen was a good twelve meters away from him, and Henriksen was still trying to shout. But he still heard it when one of the girls gasped in terror, and the queen suddenly stopped, angling her huge head down until it was nearly touching her slimy chest. Then her jaws spread wide, the second set shooting forward and dribbling thick mucus all over the grating underneath. There was a cry, quickly cut off, and then Krissy squeaked, “Move move _move_!”

And the queen grabbed for the floor, hooking her claws into the grating and pulling a huge section up. Twin screams greeted her, and Newt sobbed, “Go!” The queen snapped at the air with both sets of jaws, then grabbed for another piece of grating, pulling it up as easily as she’d ripped Henriksen apart, and Dean wasn’t going to get here in time. 

Sam didn’t think about it. He just grabbed for the stretcher, heaving into the air as he ran straight for the queen. She turned to meet him, mucus dribbling over her bared teeth, and he slammed the stretcher right into them. It flew from his hands, and he fell to his knees, skidding painfully across the floor. 

The cargo lock doors opened.

Something stood there, something huge. Not as big as the queen, but far bigger than he was. As Sam watched, gasping, it took a booming step into the room, and with a loud whir raised two long metal arms. 

“Get away from my brother, you bitch,” Dean snarled.

The queen dropped a square of grating with a clang and sprang for him. But Dean had strapped himself into one of the _Janus_ ’s robotic cargo loaders, the same kind he’d been driving for the last few months on Gateway Station. With precise movements, Dean manipulated the controls, and one of the metal arms swung around and smacked the queen on the jaw, throwing her fifteen meters across the shuttle bay and into the wall. 

The queen caught herself with all four legs and rebounded, crossing the room in two strides, only to get nailed by a vicious backhand from the loader’s other arm. The queen skidded across the floor, her claws catching in the grating. She was almost at the shuttle now.

And the drop hatch beyond it.

In a flash, Sam understood what they had to do. “Dean!” he shouted. “Dean, the drop hatch!”

Dean didn’t reply, but the loader whirred back into life, and he walked it across the shuttle bay, every step booming. The queen rushed to meet him, and Dean swung both arms up and shot them forward, catching her with double blows to the chest. She staggered, and Dean took the opportunity to shove her backward a half dozen more steps, until she teetered on the edge of the drop hatch.

The opening was a good ten meters square, and just as deep. If they could just knock her into it and open the hatch at the bottom, it would blow her out of the ship and into the dark reaches of space. 

They would just have to make sure they didn’t go with her.

Dean swung the loader’s arm again, trying to push her over the edge, but the queen grabbed for it and snarled, her second set of jaws shooting forward and toward Dean’s face. “No!” Sam yelled, and Dean jammed the controls forward into full throttle. The loader’s engine roared, and it barreled forward, pushing the queen over the edge.

Taking the loader with her.

Sam ran full out, skidding to a stop only inches from the edge of the drop hatch. “Dean!” he yelled, leaning over the edge. Dean, still in the loader, lay awkwardly on top of the queen’s heaving body. The queen herself seemed dazed, her tail only twitching, her jaws opening and closing. As Sam watched, heart in his throat, Dean reached for the straps holding him in place. Slowly, painfully, he unbuckled them. “Sam?” he mumbled.

“I’m here,” Sam called down. “Hurry!”

Dean grabbed for one of the metal arms and dragged himself out, wincing. There was a service ladder less than a meter away, and Dean reached for it, grasping the rungs and pulling himself up onto it. “Get ready,” he wheezed, starting to climb.

Panting, Sam scanned the drop hatch controls, searching for the open and close commands. Luckily, they hadn’t changed much since he’d learned how ships operated fifty-seven years ago. Quickly, he engaged the sequence, then hovered his hand over the lever. “Ready!” he called, leaning forward again.

Dean was almost halfway to him when the queen’s hand shot up and grabbed for his ankle. “Shit!” Dean screamed, nearly losing his grip on the ladder. He grappled frantically at the rungs, finally hooking one elbow through. “Sam, open the hatch! _Open the hatch_!”

Sam couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it, not when it might mean Dean would get blown out too; unlike the queen, in space Dean would die within seconds. He couldn’t lose Dean, not now, not like this. But his brother’s face was going red with effort, and his grip on the ladder was slipping again, and if Sam didn’t do it he was going to lose his brother no matter what.

“Dean,” he sobbed, and pulled the lever.

A fierce wind sprang up, blowing through the room and down toward the open hatch. It caught Sam on the back, grabbing him and pushing him forward until he almost fell into the hatch himself. He caught sight of Dean on the ladder below him, looking up in horror, saw Dean’s lips shape his name. The queen was gone, spiraling away into the distance of space below. Dean was safe.

Sam smiled, and fell.

Something grabbed his leg.

He hit the edge of the drop hatch with a painful thud. Henriksen pulled hard, dragging him back onto the floor. He’d hooked his other hand into the grating, Sam saw. The synthetic skin had peeled from his fingers, but Henriksen didn’t seem to care. “Close the hatch,” he droned, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the wind. “Close the hatch, Sam!”

Sam nodded numbly, hooking his own fingers into the grating and dragging himself inch by inch over to the controls. “That’s it,” Henriksen encouraged, his grip on Sam’s leg never faltering. Sam wrapped one arm around the box of the controls and reached up with the other, touching his fingers to the lever. Panting, he stretched up and shoved at it, and with a sudden lurch, it snapped up.

The wind stopped.

“Dean,” Sam sobbed, crawling to the edge of the drop hatch and peering down.

Dean was still there, climbing fast now. Sam reached for him, grabbed his shoulders, and together they tumbled out onto the floor. “You idiot,” Dean rasped, his arms pulling Sam in close. “You fuckin’ _idiot_.”

“Sam?” he heard Krissy say. He heard Newt reply, heard Henriksen say something to the both of them, but Sam didn’t hear it. He just buried his face in his brother’s neck, and clung.

*****

They lay there for a long time, Sam pressed on top of him, breathing in each other’s air. Sam was shaking, fingers curled around Dean’s shoulders so tight that it hurt. “We made it,” Dean whispered. “Sammy, it’s okay. We made it, and the girls are all right.”

“Charlie,” Sam gasped. “And Henriksen.”

Dean reached up with his good hand, smoothed Sam’s messy hair back. “They’ll be okay, too.” This time, they weren’t entirely alone. This time, they were all in one piece.

Sam’s chest heaved against his as his brother gasped long and ragged breaths.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean said, pushing his brother back though he was loath to let go himself. "We have to check on the girls." Sam nodded wordlessly, clambered back to his feet, wiping at his good eye.

The girls were clinging to each other, too. Dean knew how they felt, the world turned upside down, and having only each other. Besides Sam and Dean, no one else would quite know what they had been through. Not even Charlie and Henriksen, not really. Dean kept hold of Sam, but reached out for the girls, pulled them back up above the floor. They crashed into a tight hug, the four of them. Dean knew it then. They were family, more so than Dad had ever been, at least.

“Can we skip eating?” Newt asked after a long time, her voice muffled against Sam’s shoulder. “I don’t think I can right now.”

Sam broke out into a laugh and pushed his hair out of his face. “Sure.”

“Charlie,” Krissy said, and peeled away from the rest of them to run back up the ramp and check on her. Charlie lifted her head from where she was strapped into the shuttle seat and smiled weakly in Krissy’s direction. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “I was worried you’d miss the ride out.”

Krissy reached for Charlie’s bandaged arm, but let her hand hover right above it. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

Charlie laughed weakly. “Like a bitch, kiddo. But I’ll be fine. Look at Sam and Dean, they survived a whole lot worse than this.”

“All right,” Dean told her. “Speaking of which, we’d better get you in a cryopod.” He held up his mechanical hand, palm out. “Don’t want you winding up like this.”

She nodded. “Hey, guys?”

“Yeah, Charlie?” Sam, pulled together enough to sound reassuring.

“Thanks for being here with us,” she said. “Without the two of you, this could have been a whole lot worse.”

Sam looked to Dean, mouth open like he wanted to say something, but he hesitated. Dean had no such reservations, though. The curtain was pulled back, and it was time to reveal the damned wizard already. “Without us,” Dean told her, “the Corporation never would have sent you in. They were counting on us being there from the beginning.”

“Why?”

Dean shrugged. “Haven’t figured that part out yet.” Together, he and Sam hauled her up out of the seat and carried her back to the room with the cryopods. They laid her inside one fully dressed.

“See you when we get back,” she told them, weakly clasping first Sam’s, then Dean’s hand. They closed the pod door, and her eyes drifted shut.

As for the girls, Dean couldn’t bear to separate them for the journey back. After the _Bellerophon_ , he’d wanted to share a pod with Sammy, but the two of them were too big. The girls, however, didn’t have that problem at all. He let Sam undress them for cryosleep, held his mechanical hand in his real one, felt the cheap joints grind and catch. Fucking hand needed a damned tune-up after everything they’d been through.

He did help Sam get the girls settled into their pod, smoothed Newt’s hair back into place, held his fist out to Krissy, who made a fist and bumped it against his.

“There you go,” Sam said. “All set. When you wake up, we should be back at Gateway Station.”

Newt reached for him. “Sam? Can we dream?”

Sam smiled at her, smiled like Dean hadn’t seen since before everything went all to hell. “Yeah, Newt. I think we can all dream, now.” He laid his giant hand on her cheek, stroked her face with the pad of his thumb until she relaxed. Krissy threw an arm over her sister as they closed the pod door, and they curled tightly together.

Dean watched them for longer than he cared to admit. Two lost girls, so much like him and Sammy. But things would be better for them, he promised silently. He would make sure of it.

Sam reached for him, leaned against him like Dean was the only thing keeping him upright. “Come on,” Dean whispered. “You get Henriksen squared away, I’ll set the course and meet you back here.”

“Don’t be gone long,” Sam told him.

“I won’t. I promise.”

The _Janus_ already had a return course plotted. It was simply a matter of sending a beacon into orbit around that fucking rock, warning any future visitors about the dangers of landing on it, and then executing the return command. By the time he got back to the cryosleep pods, Sam had already hooked Henriksen into his own pod. There was a mass of wires and tubes in the pod with him, a kind of android life-support system, Dean guessed, judging by the instructions Henriksen was giving Sammy.

“Henriksen,” he said, and the android looked up at him, dark eyes questioning. “I just want to say thanks. For calling down the shuttle, for saving Sammy, for keeping us all alive.”

“All in a day’s work,” Henriksen replied, and coughed around the milky white fluid that was still leaking from his mouth. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to bunk down before I shut down, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, nodding.

Sam closed the pod door on Henriksen, and then the two of them were the only ones left awake. They sat down on two adjacent cryopods, their knees brushing, just staring at each other for the longest time. It wasn’t like it was before, back on Gateway Station before they shipped out. The silence between them wasn’t drawn out, wasn’t there because they didn’t have anything more to say. It was a good silence, like the quiet after a storm, or the sleepy lull before they had to get out of bed.

Maybe Dean reached for Sam’s hands first, maybe it was Sam who reached for Dean’s. Their fingers collided and tangled together.

“The queen,” Sammy said.

“She didn’t have yellow eyes either,” Dean finished for him. “I know, Sammy. This isn’t what Mom fought, but I can’t figure out what Dad was thinking when he sent us here. It doesn’t make sense. Why is he so obsessed with these aliens? Why bring these back?”

Sam shook his head. “Why is he so obsessed?” he asked, voice hushed and quiet. “It was close to eighty years ago, and as far as I can tell, there’s been no sign of whatever it was that killed Mom since. Can’t he just let it go?”

“I think it’s time to ask him.”

Sam nodded. They didn’t talk after that, just held each other’s hands tight. They didn’t let go for a long time, not even when they settled down into their respective pods. And even when the pod doors started to close, and they had to let go, Dean kept watch over Sam.

They’d survived. Again.

 

**Epilogue**   


John’s been waiting for this moment for months. Ever since Zachariah had told him the news, he’d known it was only a matter of time before he would have to answer for what had happened, fifty-seven years ago. 

The crisis on LV-426 has only given him more time to try to prepare what he would say. He’s seen the reports on the finding of the _Pegasus_ , the medical reports from Gateway, current photographs and vids, even the reports Naomi sent from the colony before her death. He knows exactly what to expect.

But when the door swings open and his boys walk through, it’s still a surprise.

They don’t look like the boys he remembers. It’s not just the patch over Sam’s missing eye and the scars radiating out from it, or the metallic hand glinting at Dean’s side. It’s something in the looks on their faces, in the way they move into the room, in the set of their shoulders as they face him. It’s the same change he remembers seeing in the mirror, after Mary’s ship blew. His boys have seen horror, now.

And they’re still here.

“Sam. Dean. It’s been a long time,” he says, quietly.

It’s Dean who responds, to John’s surprise. It was always Sam who challenged him when they were young, who fought every decision he made, every step he took. “Not to us,” Dean snaps, his face hard. “To us, it was just a few months ago that we figured out our own father had sold us out.”

John closes his eyes for a moment. He had originally thought to explain, to tell Dean exactly why only Castiel had been given the retrieval order. The moment Sam had been assigned to that ship, it was the only option. Sam, who always fought him, and Dean, who only fought him over Sam. But he realizes his mistake almost immediately. 

“You didn’t need orders,” is all he says. 

“Bullshit,” Sam says. His younger son sounds different, quieter, but there’s still a thread of steel in that voice. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you gave Castiel that order. Even Bobby figured it out, Dad. He left the company over it!”

John carefully schools his expression. “Bobby left for his own reasons,” he grunts, with just a hint of disingenuousness in his voice.

“Bobby left because you fucked us over,” Dean takes over, real anger in his voice. “But we screwed it up for you, didn’t we? We got away, we survived, just like you'd trained us. But we didn’t bring the fucker back, and so you got Naomi Burke to make sure we’d go back there, just like good little soldiers. She was loyal to you, and you sacrificed her just like you were willing to sacrifice us.” 

Sam fixes his one eye on John’s, and there, that’s the boy John remembers, the same fight burning in him. “Why, Dad? When did revenge become more important than us?”

“You knew what you were supposed to do,” John growls. He has to do this carefully. Too much, and he’ll lose them. “You knew what it meant. You were supposed to survive, and you were supposed to make sure what happened to your mother never happened to anyone else. You both knew surviving wasn’t enough. You were supposed to bring it back. Bobby never understood that, but you two should have.” He throws out the final barb. “You were supposed to be strong enough.”

The boys step back from him, exchange looks, and then Dean tosses something onto the bed. “We were strong enough,” his son says, something cold in his voice John has never heard before. “We killed them all.”

His boys walk out.

Light glints off the surface of whatever it is they’ve left behind. John stretches out a gnarled hand and picks it up. It’s Dean’s flight license, the one he was issued over sixty years ago, with the old ‘SW’ emblazoned on the corner. John traces a thumb over the S, thinking. He has no doubt his boys will do whatever they set out to do. They always have.

The only question is what it is they’re going to do.

Some time later, the door opens again, and Zachariah steps in. “They’ve gone, to these coordinates.” He hands John a reader. “Did it go as expected, sir?” 

John nods, staring at the numbers on the screen. His other hand, the one holding Dean’s flight license, tightens until the corners bite into his palm. “Just as planned.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **[ART POST](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/105573.html) **


End file.
